By Zoltán Dujisin

BUDAPEST, Apr 30 (IPS) - The situation of Roma in the Czech Republic has always been bad, but growing right-wing extremism has taken tensions to new levels, driving many to seek asylum in Canada.
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IRIN

DAKAR, 29 April 2009 (IRIN) - Nigeria has confirmed 193 polio cases in 2009 but as the latest round of vaccinations comes to a close international experts say they are gaining ground in the fight to eliminate polio in Nigeria.
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By Zoltán Dujisin

BUDAPEST, Apr 29 (IPS) - An official investigation shows that it is more and more likely that a CIA prison existed in Poland at the height of the “war on terror".
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Fareed Zakaria - NEWSWEEK

From the magazine issue dated May 4, 2009

What Obama has been able to accomplish in his first 100 days is enough to make any president envious.
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By Stephen Leahy*

ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Apr 28 (Tierramérica) - While industrialised countries like Canada continue to emit ever-higher levels of greenhouse-effect gases, indigenous peoples around the world are working to survive and adapt to an increasingly dangerous climate.

Over millennia, indigenous peoples have developed a large arsenal of practices that are of potential benefit today for coping with climate change, including some holistic and refreshingly practical ideas.
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By John Goetz and Britta Sandberg - Der Spiegel

EUROPE’S ‘SPECIAL INTERROGATIONS’

The current debate in the US on the “special interrogation methods” sanctioned by the Bush administration could soon reach Europe. It has long been clear that the CIA used the Szymany military airbase in Poland for extraordinary renditions. Now there is evidence of a secret prison nearby.
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By Leonardo Padura Fuentes (*)

HAVANA, Apr (IPS) It’s important to remember that before an end of the US embargo of Cuba became even remotely conceivable, certain major international developments had to take place: the profound political shift in Latin America, the moving election of the first black president of the United States (a man, moreover, committed to change in its widest sense), and the financial and economic cataclysm that has shaken the capitalist system to its roots.
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By David Cole - The Nation

This article appeared in the May 11, 2009 edition of The Nation.

More than three years ago, KindHearts, a registered charity in Toledo, Ohio, had its offices raided, all its documents and records seized and its assets frozen. The charge against it? There was none. The Treasury Department simply said KindHearts was “under investigation” and invoked a provision of the USA Patriot Act to shut it down. It was never given a trial, a hearing or a statement of reasons. To this day it has not been charged with any wrongdoing, yet its assets are still frozen. The investigation is ongoing, and under the Patriot Act, that is enough to keep the freeze in place.
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Omid Memarian interviews DR. MUNIR JIWA, director of the Centre for Islamic Studies

BERKELEY, California, Apr 24 (IPS) - In an Apr. 6 address to the Turkish Parliament on the final day of his European trip, President Barack Obama praised Muslim Americans for “enriching the United States".

However, according to Dr. Munir Jiwa, director of the Centre for Islamic Studies at the Graduate Theological Union of the University of California, Berkeley, “virulent Islamophobia” persists across the country.
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By Karen Rothmyer - THE NATION

In the days after the Maersk Alabama was attacked by Somali pirates, the papers here were full of news about the incident. Many letter writers praised the cargo ship’s captain, Richard Phillips, for volunteering to be a hostage in exchange for his crew’s safety, with one commenting that he wished Kenya’s feuding leaders would draw a lesson “and put the interests of the country before their own.” Others expressed the hope that the United States will work to eliminate the pirate menace, noting how close Somalia is to Kenya. No one, however, has proposed military action against Somalia.
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Analysis by Christi van der Westhuizen*

CAPE TOWN, Apr 23 (IPS) - South Africa’s fourth democratic election will not bring an end the political turmoil that has beset the country since 2007 when former president Thabo Mbeki suspended the country’s head of public prosecutions and was replaced by Jacob Zuma as leader of the ruling ANC.
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Kevin Peraino - NEWSWEEK

From the magazine issue dated Apr 27, 2009

Yemen’s president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, has long governed a tinderbox. His party survived armed clashes with separatist rebels in the country’s south and Houthi tribesmen in the north. Al Qaeda is also a growing threat. Last month a suicide bomber detonated himself at a crowded archeological site in Yemen, killing four South Korean tourists, and earlier this month CentCom chief Gen. David Petraeus warned that Yemen was becoming a safe haven for Qaeda militants. Saleh spoke with NEWSWEEK’s Kevin Peraino at his palace in Sanaa. Excerpts:
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By Mario Lubetkin (*)

ROME, Apr (IPS) Major global depressions, like the current one, always have a domino effect that reaches almost every economic and social activity. The media, however, tend to focus on only a few of its manifestations -those that strike the centres of power- while neglecting the periphery where poverty deepened by the crisis has far more dramatic consequences.
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By Christian Parenti - The Nation

On a range of seaside mountains between Shenzhen and Hong Kong, two visions of China’s future development stand side by side. The slope of the mountains is busy with construction workers building roads and swank modern trophy homes, each with a two-car garage. The valley below is carpeted with acres of bright green chemical-fed golf courses, their sand traps winking up in playful floral patterns. This is the future as California-style, auto-based sprawl.
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John Vidal, Environment editor - guardian.co.uk

Number of people affected by extreme weather has doubled in 30 years and is expected to reach 375 million a year by 2015

Tuesday 21 April 2009. Emergency organisations could be overwhelmed within seven years by the rising number of people in poor countries affected by floods, droughts, heatwaves, wild fires, storms, landslides and other climate hazards.
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Analysis by Zoltán Dujisin

BUDAPEST, Apr 21 (IPS) - As the extension of the U.S. missile defence system to Eastern Europe is halted, U.S. President Barack Obama seems inclined to exchange it for Russian cooperation in taming Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

The controversial project, which would include a radar in the Czech Republic and an anti-missile base in Poland, had been energetically pushed by the previous Republican administration of former U.S. president George W. Bush, but lost impetus after the Democrat Barack Obama won the U.S. presidential bid last November.

Russia believes the system, officially aimed at protecting the West from ballistic attacks originating in Iran and ‘rogue regimes’, is aimed against it and could spark a new arms race.

Now Obama has proposed to ‘reset’ relations with Russia, suggesting an 80 percent decrease in nuclear arsenals for both countries in exchange for the U.S. reviewing its missile defence project.

More immediately, the reset would include a new treaty on strategic offensive arms, more desired by the U.S. than by Russia, and a united policy towards Iran. Analysts believe, however, that Obama will keep the missile defence project alive on paper to use it as a negotiating tool with the Russians on Iran.

After a meeting with EU leaders in Prague, Obama said that if “the Iranian threat is eliminated, we will have a stronger basis for security and the driving force for missile defence construction in Europe will be removed.” He said that “as long as the threat from Iran persists, we will go forward.”

There is some uncertainty over the influence Russia can exert on Iran, which presently does not pose a nuclear or ballistic threat to the West.

“Russia’s influence is very limited, but can be important in two senses: by standing with Western countries it can help isolate Iran politically, and it can also make sure it does not export any advanced missile technology to Iran,” Zoltan Biro, Russia expert at the Institute of History of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences told IPS.

The U.S. President’s calls for multilateral action on Iran and worldwide gradual disarmament were welcomed by the crowds attending his speech in Prague, but were received with cold skepticism by the local right-wing political elite and even with anger by much of the press affiliated to the right.

The project had the support of Czech and Polish governing elites who are disappointed by Obama’s lukewarm attitude to the project.

To them Obama’s words on Iran and the radar sounded like a diplomatic ‘no’ to a lame duck government that recently lost a no-confidence vote in the Czech parliament during the country’s rotating EU presidency.

“The system is not at a point that is effective, and the present recession gives the Obama administration an elegant way out of such a dubious and expensive project,” said Biro.

“For Russia the project is politically unacceptable; it resents it because not even in the cold war something like a long-range ballistic structure was installed in Europe,” the analyst adds.

Pundits expect all sides to try to save face and avoid looking as if easily making concessions, meaning much of the cooperation could happen behind closed doors.

Bush’s administration had in the past sought Kremlin cooperation in preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons and in assisting North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) troops fighting in Afghanistan. But it had offered little in exchange, leading to an all-time low in relations with Russia over the construction of its missile base in Eastern Europe and by actively promoting NATO membership for former Soviet republics.

Georgia and Ukraine’s aspirations have meanwhile been thwarted by the political chaos prevailing in both countries, creating an image of an irresponsible political elite unready for the responsibilities of membership of the military alliance.

The last drop was Georgia’s offensive on its separatist and pro-Russian South Ossetian region, which sparked a massive Russian military reaction culminating in the temporary invasion of Georgia proper and Russia’s recognition of South Ossetian independence.

While the West formally condemned Russian actions, calling for respect of Georgian sovereignty and breaking off NATO-Russian cooperation, it became equally cold and fatigued with both the Georgian and the Ukrainian pro- Western leaderships.

Last March French Defence Minister Herve Morin went as far as suggesting that Russia should be consulted on further NATO enlargement, a position that for right-wing politicians in Eastern Europe amounts to capitulation to Russia’s “imperial ambitions".

NATO and the U.S. seem ready to re-engage in a fully-fledged dialogue with Russia but uncertainty prevails on what the Russian response will be.

“There is a tangible desire to start to do something with the Americans, but the fear that they will ’set us up’ once again, and the suspicion that it engenders, are also still strong,” former Russian diplomat Vladimir Frolov recently wrote in Russkiy Newsweek.

These are suspicions that are growing as Russia expresses anger over NATO’s planned military exercises in Georgia in the next weeks, seen as provocative in Moscow. Now Russia threatens not to attend the joint panel with NATO expected for Apr. 29. (END/2009)

By Jiyoung LeeAn

SEOUL, Apr 20 (IPS) - Feminist activists have adopted ‘glocal’, a relatively new geolexical construct, to bridge activism from across Asia, Latin America and Africa.
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Norman Girvan

The Vth Summit of the Americas is now history. The Summit ended without the signing of the contentious Declaration that several countries had indicated contained unacceptable omissions and inclusions.
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Analysis by Helena Cobban*

WASHINGTON, Apr 17 (IPS) - Three months after the end of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, and nearly four months after former prime minister Ehud Olmert started it, the standoff between Israel and Hamas is as unresolved as ever.
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Reprieve

Reprieve welcomes the release of CIA memos sanctioning a system of professionalised torture and calls for full transparency on crimes committed during the ‘War on Terror’

Reprieve welcomes the release of documents detailing how CIA lawyers sanctioned the systematic use of torture and calls for a serious response to the crimes committed.
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By Leonardo Padura Fuentes (*)

HAVANA, Apr (IPS) We Cubans may be the people least frightened by the ominous talk of the “economic crisis” that is stalking the
world and has already devastated so many. A prolonged submersion in the sea of shortages and severe limitations that led down into the hell of widespread poverty during the post-Soviet decade of the 1990s -euphemistically dubbed the “Special Period in Times of
Peace"- taught us to weather extended periods of every kind of scarcity -food, electricity, transport, housing, medicine, clothing, and much more- and to come through it alive, albeit all too often battered.
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Andy Stone - Forbes.com/Newsweek

Europe, led by Switzerland, leads the way as the U.S. falls.

Apr 15, 2009 The declining health of Mother Earth has drawn growing attention over the last two decades, with countries coming together to fight a range of environmental threats, from declining fishing stocks to global warming.
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By Supachai Panitchpakdi (*)

GENEVA, Apr (IPS) As the global economic crisis continues to unfold, it is having severe effects on international trade. UNCTAD estimates that merchandise exports from developing countries could decline by 15.5% this year. At the regional level, we expect export growth to shrink by 16.8% in Asia, 12.5% in Africa, and 10% in Latin America.
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Comment By Marcus Raskin & Joshua Frens-String

April 13, 2009. According to Jeffrey Davidow, President Obama’s adviser for the Summit of the Americas meeting, “It would be unfortunate to lose the opportunity for this hemisphere, at the beginning of the Obama administration, to set down some guidelines and make some progress jointly by getting distracted by the Cuban issue.
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By Kumi Naidoo (*)

LONDON, Apr (IPS) For those of us focused on eradicating poverty and inequality, the greatest risk about the G20 summit was that the richest countries would use the global financial downturn to cut back on aid commitments and put the interests of their own countries first. This would spell disaster for the millions of people suffering from rising hunger and climate change and living in deep poverty across the developing world.
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SPIEGEL INTERVIEW WITH IRANIAN PRESIDENT AHMADINEJAD

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke with SPIEGEL about what he expects from US President Barack Obama, why America’s new Afghanistan strategy is wrong and why Iran should have a spot on the UN Security Council.
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Lila Guterman - Naturenews

Fears of a global rise in infectious conditions may be unfounded.

Climate change takes the blame for many dim future prospects: rising sea levels, more frequent droughts and disappearing glaciers, to name just a few. But perhaps the warming trend should be absolved of responsibility for a predicted bump in the global burden of infectious disease.
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Analysis by Helena Cobban

WASHINGTON, Apr 10 (IPS) - President Barack Obama has spoken out forcefully - including this week, in Ankara, Turkey - in favour of building an independent Palestinian state alongside a still robust Israel. However, many Palestinians have noted that President George W. Bush also, in recent years, expressed a commitment to Palestinian statehood. But, they note, Bush never took the actions necessary to achieve such a state - and neither, until now, has Obama.
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IPS interviews RICHARD DICKER , programme director for international justice, HRW.

JOHANNESBURG, Apr 8 (IPS) - The Rome Statute, adopted in July 1998, enabled the formation of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2002. Since then the ICC has issued 12 arrest warrants , all against Africans.

The focus on Africa has led to criticism that the ICC only targets African and marginalised countries. This criticism has increased in recent months following the indictment of a sitting head of state, Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir.
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Comment - By Danny Glover - The Nation

April 8, 2009. In 2001 I traveled to Durban, South Africa, to join the tens of thousands of people who came to participate in the United Nations-sponsored World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance. More than 2,000 came from the United States, a rainbow of people crossing all lines–racial, ethnic, national, language, immigration status, religious and much more–joining an equally diverse crowd from across the globe. It was an extraordinary opportunity to meet, discuss, argue and strategize over how to rid the world of these longstanding evils.
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By Kelvin Kachingwe

LUSAKA, Apr 8 (IPS) - Africa’s contribution to the global economy will continue to be low if there is no investment in infrastructure, delegates heard at the North-South Corridor Conference in Lusaka, where 1.2 billion dollars was raised.

Zambia’s President Rupiah Banda told the conference, which ended yesterday, that there is a need to invest in infrastructure development and the energy sector to reverse the continent’s low contribution to the global economy.
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By NBC News Bo Gu

BEIJING, April 08 – Just 126 years after his death, Karl Marx’s moment may finally have arrived.

The People’s Press – the biggest publishing house for China’s orthodox revolutionary books – reports that Marx’s anti-capitalism opus “Das Kapital” has been selling about 4,000-5,000 copies nationwide a month since last November. That’s a big jump from before the economic crisis, when the book sold well under 1,000 copies per month on average.
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By Hazel Henderson (*)

ST.AUGUSTINE, Apr (IPS) The financial meltdown generated by Wall Street and the “too big to fail” culture of global money-centre banks and financiers is generating local initiatives and demands to decentralise and democratise finance.

While national safety-nets are unravelling because of budget cuts, local leadership is rising, offering many creative alternatives for communities to nurture healthier home-grown economies:
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ANSA

Expansion puts pressure on fault lines and causes tremors

(ANSA) - Rome, April 7 - Monday’s earthquake in the central region of Abruzzo was in part due to the fact that Italy is getting wider, a French expert said on Tuesday.

‘’Italy is getting wider by one millimeter a year and this is putting pressure on fault lines along the Apennine mountain chain,'’ seismologist Pascal Bernard said in an interview published in the French daily Liberation.
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Analysis by Zoltán Dujisin

BUDAPEST, Apr 6 (IPS) - A declaration which equates communism to Nazism and condemns communist ideology as “directly responsible for crimes against humanity” has been debated in the European Parliament on the initiative of the Czech Presidency of the European Union.

The “Prague Declaration” was approved by the Czech Senate in June 2008. It calls for communism and Nazism to be recognised as the common totalitarian legacy of Europe.
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From The Economist print edition

How attitudes to mercy killings differ around Europe

Apr 2009 . TWO European countries, Britain and Belgium, have had cause in recent weeks to ponder the same ethical question: what happens when doctors decide a patient has no chance of a bearable life? In Britain headlines reported the grief of parents whose wishes were overruled by the courts, allowing doctors to turn off the ventilators keeping their son alive. Shortly afterwards a new study reported that active euthanasia—in which not only is medical care withdrawn, but drugs are used to shorten life—is opposed by two-thirds of British doctors.
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David Miliband - NEWSWEEK

From the magazine issue dated Apr 6, 2009

The energy crunch fed the credit crunch, because oil represents a third of the U.S. trade deficit.

After 2001, the foreign policies of many countries were shaped in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, which had wrenched minds back to the imperative of national security. Today those foreign policies are again being reshaped—but this time by the economic crisis. And the changes will be as profound as those wrought by 9/11.
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Darío Montero interviews economist JOHN NASH*

MONTEVIDEO, Apr 2 (Tierramérica) - With an incisive report in hand about what awaits Latin America and the Caribbean in the future if action is not taken to fight climate change, economist John Nash defends the role of the World Bank and underscores the need to expand the so-called “clean development mechanism".
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Analysis by Sanjay Suri

LONDON, Mar 31 (IPS) - If the draft declaration of the G20 meeting in London is anything to go by, the most specific outcome of this summit is that there will be another one later in the year.

Several governments have begun to lobby already to host the next G20, in apparent confidence that this one is not going to take care of the problems that the leaders are gathering to address, if not resolve.
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By Dave Zirin * - The Nation

Reimagining Socialism: A Nation Forum

April 1, 2009 .I’ll never forget interviewing Lester “Red” Rodney, the 96-year-old former sports editor of the Communist Party’s newspaper, the Daily Worker. Speaking about the Great Depression, Rodney said, “People who weren’t around during the 1930s can’t fully grasp what it was like politically. If you weren’t some kind of radical or socialist…you were considered brain-dead, and you probably were!”
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