Por Javier Darío Restrepo

BOGOTÁ, 29 may (IPS) - Visiblemente indignado, el ex presidente colombiano César Gaviria (1990-1994) denunció esta semana lo que llamó un artículo “monstruoso” del proyecto de reforma política que se discute en el Congreso legislativo.
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JUAN GOYTISOLO - Tribuna, El País

Moscú proclama el fin de la guerra en la república caucásica. Allí ha practicado durante años una represión brutal ante la que EE UU y Europa han hecho la vista gorda. Pero la savia del cardo checheno sigue viva
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By Joaquin Roy (*)

NEW YORK, May (IPS) Not long ago the people on this planet lived without the anguish of insecurity. This is because they assumed that insecurity was the natural state of things, for everyone, rich and poor, powerful and weak, for the colonised and the imperialist occupiers. Life seemed comparatively more normal, and people were more fatalistic and resigned.
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By Jonathan Schell

This article appeared in the June 15, 2009 edition of The Nation.

It has fallen to President Obama to deal with the policies and practices of torture inaugurated by the Bush administration. He started boldly, ordering an end to the abuses, announcing the closing in one year of the detention camp at Guantánamo and releasing the Bush-era Justice Department memos authorizing torture.
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ILO News

GENEVA – The International Labour Office (ILO) today issued new labour market projections for 2009, showing a further increase in unemployment, working poor and those in vulnerable employment.

In presenting the new data, ILO Director-General Juan Somavia, said the ILO’s annual International Labour Conference, to be held in Geneva on 3-19 June, was to consider an emergency “global jobs pact” designed to promote a coordinated policy response to the global jobs crisis.
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By Sanjay Suri

LONDON, May 28 (IPS) - The underside of the global economic recession is a worldwide repression of rights, Amnesty International secretary-general Irene Khan warned Thursday at the launch of the human rights group’s 2009 report.

“The economic crisis is aggravating pre-existing human rights problems such as marginalisation of indigenous peoples, the situation of forced evictions of slum dwellers, and the issue of refugees and migrants,” she told IPS in an interview.
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By Hazel Henderson (*)

ST. AUGUSTINE, FLORIDA, May (IPS) An outside-the-box approach is needed for the worsening problems of Afghanistan and Pakistan. US official policy in its war in Afghanistan is to combat Al Qaeda and make sure there are no further attacks on the USA from their safe havens. Yet, on his recent visit to the US, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said that there are no Al Qaeda members in Afghanistan. General David Petraeus, US Central Command Commander, also stated that no Al Qaeda members are in Afghanistan.
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IRIN

JOHANNESBURG, 26 May 2009 (IRIN) - Zimbabwe’s cholera caseload is expected to top the 100,000 mark within the next few days, amid warnings by aid agencies that although the disease is subsiding, it has not been eradicated and could flare up again.
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By Dahr Jamail

MARFA, Texas, May 26 (IPS) - “It’s a matter of what I’m willing to live with,” Specialist Victor Agosto of the U.S. Army, who is refusing orders to deploy to Afghanistan, explained to IPS. “I’m not willing to participate in this occupation, knowing it is completely wrong.”

Agosto, who returned from a 13-month deployment to Iraq in November 2007, is based at Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas.
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Leslie Savan -The Nation Blogs

As rational, soaring, and adult-ready as Barack Obama’s speech before the shrine of the Constitution in the National Archives was–and, in contrast, as full of retreaded lies as Dick Cheney’s Personal Prosecution Protection Plan before the rightwing American Enterprise Institute was–the former vice was already hanging ten on a fear wave. The day before, the Republicans drew a blind fear response from the Democratically controlled Senate, which voted 90-6 against funding the closing of Guantanamo.
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Entrevista a HIROTSUGU TERASAKI de Soka Gakkai Internacional

NUEVA YORK, may (Thalif Deen - IPS) - Estados Unidos, el único país en lanzar un ataque militar con armas nucleares, y Japón, el único que lo ha sufrido, tendrán que tomar la iniciativa para crear una convención internacional que prohíba todo armamento atómico, dijo un histórico activista por el desarme.
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By Jose Graziano da Silva (*)

SANTIAGO, May (IPS) Though the world economic outlook continues to look grim, it is worth asking what the world will be like when we exit this crisis. We have to identify the forces that are affecting the course of events so that we can change the existing order and avoid these problems in the future.
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by John Nichols

05/24/2009. - Barack Obama’s speech last week at the National Archives, delivered with the Bill of Rights as a backdrop, eloquently expressed a president’s faith that it is possible to keep the nation secure while remaining true to the rule of law.

But civil libertarians heard sour notes, and U.S. Senator Russ Feingold, D-Wisconsin, shares their concerns.
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From The Economist print edition

Kuwait’s mould-breaking election

May 21st 2009 - Cairo- A recent general election may not make the government more effective.

THE economy of Kuwait is exceedingly well oiled. With just 3.4m residents, only a third of them indigenous citizens, the emirate sits on a claimed 8% of the world’s petroleum reserves. Yet for all this wealth, Kuwait’s political system remains creaky and crash-prone. Rather than inspiring the Persian Gulf’s more authoritarian monarchies to reform, its 46-year-old experiment with limited democracy has often seemed a model to be avoided. Just since 2006, batterings from the 50-member parliament, which has tended lately to be dominated by Islamists and conservative tribal leaders, have sent five successive governments tumbling like ninepins.
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By Pascal Lamy (*)

GENEVA, May (IPS) While the world could probably agree on basic objectives for our agricultural systems -adequate, nutritious, and affordable food, decent pay for farmers, and culturally and environmentally-sensitive production - we still disagree on what global integration could bring to this process.
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ANSA

Parliament ‘useless’, PM tells business body. Lower House Speaker Gianfranco Fini replies to Berlusconi’s attack: Parliament ‘neither useless nor counterproductive’

(ANSA) - Rome, May 21 - Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi on Thursday reiterated plans to change the Italian constitution to give more powers to the premier at the expense of parliament.
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Analysis by Zoltán Dujisin

BUDAPEST, May 21 (IPS) - The European Union’s Eastern Partnership, promoting closer cooperation between the EU and former Soviet Republics, has been enthusiastically endorsed in Eastern Europe, ignored in the West, and criticised in Russia.

The Polish-Swedish initiative, approved by an EU summit on May 7 in Prague, aims at giving the supranational organisation an eastern dimension to its policies, but stops short of offering membership prospects to the EU’s eastern European neighbours.
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Mario de Queiroz interviews President José Ramos-Horta*

DILI, May 20 (IPS) - Seven years after winning its independence following nearly five centuries of foreign domination, East Timor is firmly and proudly building its future, despite the heavy burden of widespread, deep-rooted poverty.

After 460 years of Portuguese colonialism and a quarter-century of occupation by East Timor’s powerful neighbour, Indonesia, it has not been possible to resolve a centuries-old problem of extreme poverty in just seven years of independence, President José Ramos-Horta tells IPS in this exclusive interview.
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By Noam Chomsky *

For one thing, even without inquiry, it was reasonable to suppose that Guantánamo was a torture chamber. Why else send prisoners where they would be beyond the reach of the law–a place, incidentally, that Washington is using in violation of a treaty forced on Cuba at the point of a gun? Security reasons were, of course, alleged, but they remain hard to take seriously. The same expectations held for the Bush administration’s “black sites,” or secret prisons, and for extraordinary rendition, and they were fulfilled.
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Analysis - By Killid Correspondents

KABUL, May 18 (IPS) - After a series of well-known Afghan politicians announced their candidacy, the up-coming presidential election was widely believed to be a turning-point in the country’s history. But most of the big names declined to register, leaving what critics allege is a weak opposition to President Hamid Karzai.
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From Economist.com

The troubled history of carmakers’ mergers

May 19th 2009 . THE bold attempt by Sergio Marchionne, chief executive of the Fiat Group, to use the crisis that has overwhelmed Detroit to forge a three-way merger between Fiat Auto, Chrysler and General Motors’ European arm, Opel, has been greeted both with admiration (for his chutzpah) and scepticism (about his ability to pull it off). The sceptics say cross-border mergers in the car industry have a poor record and that Mr Marchionne is biting off much more than he can chew.
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By Apostolis Fotiadis

ATHENS, May 18 (IPS) - “I can see migrants are the source of many problems,” says Maria Nafpliotou, an employee at a music store in the city centre. “Nobody is happy to see them living around here, but I doubt slaying them is a solution.”

She says this as she looks out into Omonia square at a demonstration called last week by a group of far-right organisations going under the name ‘Residents committees against the invasion of aliens in our country’.
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Fareed Zakaria – NEWSWEEK

Our world is more stable than we think

From the magazine issue dated May 25, 2009

It certainly looks like another example of crying wolf. After bracing ourselves for a global pandemic, we’ve suffered something more like the usual seasonal influenza. Three weeks ago the World Health Organization declared a health emergency, warning countries to “prepare for a pandemic” and said that the only question was the extent of worldwide damage. Senior officials prophesied that millions could be infected by the disease. But as of last week, the WHO had confirmed only 4,800 cases of swine flu, with 61 people having died of it. Obviously, these low numbers are a pleasant surprise, but it does make one wonder, what did we get wrong?
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By Christi van der Westhuizen

CAPE TOWN, May 15 (IPS) - The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is attempting to reinvent itself with the global financial crisis, in the process using the opportunity to promote policies that exacerbate the recession by shrinking rather than growing economies.

This is the opinion of Deborah James, director of international programmes at the Centre for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) based in Washington, U.S.
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Trasfondo

A Polish Catholic priest has published a book which provides married couples with a theological and practical guide to spicing up their sex lives.

In his book, Sex as you don’t know it: for married couples who love God, Father Ksawery Knotz aims to sweep away the strait-laced attitudes many hold.
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Leonardo Boff

Perhaps the most impressive statement in the speech of the President of Bolivia Evo Morales Ayma to the General Assembly of the U.N. on April 22nd, when that date was proclaimed the International Day of Mother Earth, was: «If the XX Century is recognized as the century of human rights; individual, social, economic, political and cultural, the XXI Century will be known as the Century of the Rights of Mother Earth, of the animals, plants, all living creatures and all beings, whose rights must also be respected and protected.»
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Analysis by Zoltán Dujisin

BUDAPEST, May 14 (IPS) - In spite of the Lisbon Treaty’s approval by both houses of the Czech Parliament, President Vaclav Klaus is refusing to sign the document that many believe would allow the EU to deal effectively with the global economic crisis.

Approving the EU (European Union) Treaty on Institutional Reform (the Lisbon Treaty) would give the EU more powers to tackle the present crisis.
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By William Fisher

NEW YORK, May 13 (IPS) - Human rights advocates and legal scholars fear that the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama may resurrect the military commissions designed by his predecessor to try Guantanamo detainees after Obama’s 120-day moratorium on proceedings expires on May 20.
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By Eric Alterman

This article appeared in the May 25, 2009 edition of The Nation.

David Broder: Eyes Wide Shut

More than eighty years ago, in his argument with Walter Lippmann about the proper role of the press in a democracy, John Dewey warned that “a class of experts is inevitably so removed from common interests as to become a class with private interests and private knowledge.”
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Analysis by Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler

JERUSALEM, May 12 (IPS) - Before stepping into Jerusalem’s interfaith and inter-political Middle East minefields, Pope Benedict XVI had posited himself as a “pilgrim of peace". But, only hours into his spiritual mission, the Pope found himself crashing up against the walls erected by pain - Jewish pain and Muslim pain, the memory of the Holocaust, and Palestinian pain of the continued Israeli occupation.
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From Economist.com

Alexander von Humboldt pioneered the science now used to study climate change

May 11th 2009 AMID this year’s flurry of scientific jubilees, one seems to have passed largely unnoticed. On May 6th admirers celebrated the 150th anniversary of the death of Alexander von Humboldt, a Prussian naturalist and geographer. He may no longer be as famous as some of his contemporaries, yet Humboldt’s work sheds a clear light on the great challenges the world faces today from climate change.
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By William Fisher

NEW YORK, May 11 (IPS) - Civil libertarians are condemning a call by two influential U.S. senators for the White House to block the impending release of photographs showing detainees being abused by U.S. military personnel at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and at other U.S. detention facilities in the Middle East and elsewhere.
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by Teivo Teivainen - Network Institute for Global Democratization

Challenges of the World Social Forum 2011 in Dakar - Global Democracy News and Ideas Special Report May 2009

The International Council (IC) of the World Social Forum (WSF) decided today, 8 May 2009,
in Rabat that the next WSF shall be organized in Dakar in 2011. The Senegalese capital
was presented as a consensual proposal of the Council of the African Social Forum, after
months of intense deliberation.
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Analysis by Helena Cobban*

LONDON, May 8 (IPS) - Last month in Prague, President Barack Obama vowed that he would seek a world without nuclear weapons. On Tuesday, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller spelled out that this policy would apply to Israel, as well.
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Reprieve

London, 08 May 2009 . The High Court has announced that it will re-open its judgment that details of the torture of former Guantanamo Bay detainee Binyam Mohamed should remain secret in the interests of national security.
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By William Fisher

NEW YORK, May 7 (IPS) - Hundreds of thousands of people are being wrongly identified because of the government’s wasteful and inefficient management of the nation’s one million-strong terrorist watchlist, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
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IRIN - humanitarian news and analysis

NAIROBI, 6 May 2009 (IRIN) - Ineffective disaster management systems, poor funding and lack of relevant data for planning risk-reduction activities have taken their toll on sub-Saharan African countries, specialists said.
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IPS interviews MWILA CHIGAGA, ILO Regional Senior Gender Specialist

ADDIS ABABA, May 6 (IPS) - The global financial crisis is on everyone’s lips. With first hand reports of job losses, house foreclosures and citizens living on credit card debt, the impact of the crisis on the individual worker in the developed world is clear.

In Africa, there have been threats of closures and retrenchments in the Zambian copper mines and Botswana’s diamond mines, amongst others. But the impact on the individual citizen and African women in particular, given the existing gender inequalities, has not been well documented.
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By Ari Melber - The Nation

May 5, 2009 .Jacob Weisberg, the talented journalist, editor and opinion leader, floats a very dangerous idea in the new issue of Newsweek. Weisberg argues that because illegal torture was essentially America’s official policy after 9/11, operating with complicity from the general public, it would be wrong to enforce US laws against torture now.

This argument basically morphs the infamous Nixon standard into a referendum–if the public supports something, then it is not illegal.
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Fareed Zakaria - NEWSWEEK

Pakistan’s military has lost every conventional war. It’s far better at guerrilla wars.

From the magazine issue dated May 18, 2009

Finally, we are told, the Pakistani military has gotten serious about the threat that militants pose to its country. The Army is now fighting back for real, sending troops to dislodge the jihadists who had spread out of the Swat Valley.
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By Erik Solheim (*)

OSLO, Apr (IPS) Cut off contact with Hamas! Don’t talk to Israel! Keep away from Burma! Over the past few years there have been calls from many quarters to break off contact with regimes we don’t like. Few, however, seem to have a realistic idea of whether breaking off contact works, or what kind of regime it might work on.
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Comment By Philip Radford - The Nation

The Obama administration has given itself an extraordinarily powerful tool that could help the president achieve all three of his top domestic goals at once–but only if he has the political moxie to deploy it to its full extent.
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By Mario Soares (*)

LISBON, Apr (IPS) The first good news regarding the economic crisis is arriving from the United States, about certain improvements in the banking sector as well (Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Morgan Chase, etc). For now, they are but faint signs. But Barack Obama continues to fight on all fronts, with rigour and courage.
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