By Mario Soares (*)

LISBON, Feb (IPS) There is lively debate in the European Union about the global recession and the economic crisis in member
countries, but relatively little discussion about the future of the Old Continent.

We need to acknowledge, above all else, that Western (EU-US) hegemony is a thing of the past. The world is now multilateral and recognises that emerging countries and those trying to emerge have an important role to play.
(more…)

By Ernest Corea

IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

WASHINGTON DC (IDN) - Historians of the future will probably spend much time looking back at the year 2010 and trying to determine whether Sarah Palin was playing the goat, acting the knave, simply following her one-time mentor, or making a considered and seriously-meant policy proposal with her recent comment about the U.S. going to war with Iran.
(more…)

By David Cronin

BRUSSELS, Feb 25, 2010 (IPS) - Arms manufacturers have been asked to advise an official European Union (EU) body on how their products can be used to stop asylum seekers entering the bloc’s territory.

Frontex, the EU’s border management agency, will host an event in Spain this coming June at which several makers of pilotless drones - or unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) - will give presentations.
(more…)

Robert Dreyfuss* - The Nation

02/23/2010 - More huffing and puffing about war with Iran, this time from Anne Applebaum of the hawkish Washington Post, but first some words of caution from Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. At a news conference with Secretary of Defense Gates yesterday, Mullen once again reiterated his long-standing caution about a military attack on Iran, even as he laced it with concern about Iran’s nuclear program and Iran’s “hegemonic” goals in the area of the Persian Gulf. Said Mullen:
(more…)

By A. D. McKenzie

PARIS, Feb 24 , 2010 (IPS) - Activists continue to protest against the French government’s handling of undocumented migrants, in a bid to secure more humane laws and treatment.

Earlier this month, French police expelled migrants from a hangar in the port city of Calais where they had been sheltered by non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and immigration minister Eric Besson declared that there would be no new ‘jungle’ on French soil.
(more…)

By Dahr Jamail*

IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (IDN) - “Look around,” the drill sergeant said. “In a few years, or even a few months, several of you will be dead. Some of you will be severely wounded or so badly mutilated that your own mother can’t stand the sight of you. And for the real unlucky ones, you will come home so emotionally disfigured that you wish you had died over there.”
(more…)

Civil Society Open Letter to WTO Director General, Pascal Lamy

Geneva, 5 February 2010 (received by Other News 22 February 2010)

Dear Mr Lamy,

We appreciated your speech of 13 January 2010 and willingness to engage in a discussion on the contested and controversial relationship between human rights and trade during the 11-13 January 2010 Colloquium on Human Rights in the Global Economy, co-organized by the International Council on Human Rights and Realizing Rights in Geneva.
(more…)

By Mark Sommer (*)

ARCATA, CALIFORNIA, Feb (IPS) “Speed Kills: Slow Down and Live". So say American road signs urging drivers to lighten their foot on the gas pedal. But little else has slowed down in the U.S. or elsewhere in the 36 years since traffic planners instituted a 55 mile-per-hour national highway speed limit (and later, in haste, repealed it). In a global culture dominated by the impatience of youth, counted in nanoseconds and fueled by just-in-time supply chains, everything needs to be done yesterday since today is no longer soon enough.
(more…)

By Pascal Lamy (*)

GENEVA, Feb (IPS) The history of the relationship between trade and human rights is a history of suspicion, and to some extent of deliberate reciprocal ignorance. Yet, trade goes hand in hand with human rights. Trade presupposes human interaction, respect and understanding. If conducted with respect, “trade polishes and softens the most barbarous mores", to quote Montesquieu and his theory of “sweet trade".
(more…)

By Jerome Mwanda

IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

DAKAR (IDN) – A gigantic wall stretching over thousands of kilometres is being erected in Africa, which has no parallels in human history except the Green Wall of China designed to hold back the Gobi desert.

The African fence – named the ‘Great Green Wall’, which will run through 11 countries – is purported to halt the southward advance of the Sahara. And it will be much more than a wall of trees stretching from Senegal to Djibouti.
(more…)

Analysis by Julio Godoy

BERLIN, Feb 2010 (IPS) - The deep economic, fiscal, and trade crises of several Mediterranean countries in the euro zone that is threatening monetary stability in Europe with the possibility of contagion spreading to developing countries, say studies.

The economic crisis is affecting Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Italy in the Mediterranean and also Ireland. These countries are members of the European monetary union (EMU) that gave up their national currencies in January 2001 in favour of the euro.
(more…)

By Babukar Kashka

IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

NAIROBI (IDN) – Bad news for the one billion inhabitants of the most castigated continent reeling under exploitation of its resources and the adverse impact of climate change as well as the financial crisis triggered by industrialized countries. In fact, Africa is likely to get only 12 billion out of the 25 billions dollar aid increase pledged by the world’s richest nations in 2005.
(more…)

By Maurice Strong (*)

BEIJING, Feb (IPS) The good news about the Copenhagen Summit on Climate Change (December 7-18) is that it produced universal agreement on the importance of early action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to manageable levels. It also made progress on some of the key elements to be included in such an agreement and on continuing the ongoing process of negotiation. The bad news is that it revealed deep and unresolved differences between the positions of the main parties, notably between the more developed and the less developed countries.
(more…)

By Fareed Zakaria* | NEWSWEEK

From the magazine issue dated Feb 15, 2010

Despite the recent squall in U.S.-Chinese relations, the fact remains that both countries have powerful reasons to cooperate with one another. These have grown over the last two decades, something that both countries seem to recognize. China’s reaction to the Obama administration’s decision to sell arms to Taiwan has been furious, but has mostly involved symbolic gestures.
(more…)

By Kumi Naidoo (*)

AMSTERDAM, Feb (IPS) As the new Executive Director of Greenpeace International I am often asked what changes I plan to make for the organisation. The response I give is one which I believe applies to Civil Society as a whole: I would like us to become even more inclusive in our membership, even more united with other groups in our work, even more determined in talking truth to power, and even more active all around the globe.
(more…)

By Ernest Corea

IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

WASHINGTON DC (IDN) - Religious ceremonies held one month after Haiti’s earthquake of January 12, 2010 saw a remarkable coherence among usually competing religious groups when priests representing voodoo beliefs, Roman Catholics, and evangelicals all worshiped together; seeking solace and holding fast to hopes of a future less harsh than the past.
(more…)

By Ignacio Ramonet (*)

PARIS, Feb (IPS) As “natural” as it may seem, no catastrophe is natural. An earthquake of the same intensity has more victims in a poor country than in a rich industrialised one. For example, the earthquake in Haiti, 7.0 on the Richter scale, caused more than
200,000 deaths, while the one six months ago that struck Honshu, Japan, caused only one death and one injury though it was of the same strength (7.1).
(more…)

By Prakash Joshi

IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

NEW DELHI (IDN) – The door has finally been thrown open for a free flow of nuclear exports to India. The four nuclear weapons states – USA, Russia, France and Britain – have lifted a ban on atomic cooperation with the world’s largest democracy, ending India’s nuclear isolation since it tested a nuclear device in 1974.
(more…)

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic

BELGRADE, Feb 12, 2010 (IPS) - The arrest of seven Wahhabis, following a police crackdown on the remote Bosnian village of Gornja Maoca, has raised concerns over the continued presence of Islamist fundamentalists who first arrived in the country during the bloody 1992-1995 Balkans war.
(more…)

By Clive Banerjee

IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

VIENNA (IDN) – More than six million children in developing lands die of malnutrition every year. Keen to remedy this unacceptable situation, a United Nations agency has started an ambitious project.
(more…)

By Pamela Sepúlveda

SANTIAGO, Feb 11, 2010 (IPS) - As tensions mount in Chile’s Mapuche territories, the indigenous people have created a new legal defence body for cases involving resistance against the state, as they put little stock in the justice system for working out cases such as land disputes.
(more…)

By Badriya Khan*

IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

BARCELONA (IDN) - The ruling Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) of Spain acclaimed Barack Obama’s victory in November 2008 as if it were its own, seeing in it a wink of fate that had placed two shining planets – Zapatero and Obama – in the same political orbit the same year. José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero had won his second term as prime minister seven months earlier.
(more…)

By Jayantha Dhanapala (*)

KANDY, SRI LANKA, Jan (IPS) The only viable normative approach regarding nuclear weapons is their total and universal elimination under strict verification. This cannot be achieved by incremental steps but only by the negotiation of a Nuclear Weapons Convention as advocated by the UN Secretary-General.
(more…)

By Babukar Kashka

IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

NAIROBI (IDN) - Fishing, noise, gillnets, traps, weirs, longlines, trawls, plastic debris, chemicals, seismic surveys, oil exploration, and military sonars are just some of the biggest killers of the world’s whales, dolphins and porpoises. All are man-made. The result is that 86 per cent of all toothed whale species are at risk.
(more…)

Analysis by Zoltán Dujisin

BUDAPEST, Feb 8, 2010 (IPS) - The 2004 ‘Orange revolution’ saw a pro-Western leadership emerge victorious in a Presidential vote that opposed them to a pro-Russian candidate accused of vote rigging. After six years of political and economic chaos, the once villain Viktor Yanukovich has reclaimed the President’s post.
(more…)

By Ernest Corea

IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

WASHINGTON DC (IDN) - Six decades after President Harry Truman raised the issue of bilateral development assistance as official policy, the dimensions of development and the demands on development assistance have been transformed.
(more…)

By Julio Godoy*

BERLIN, Feb 2010 (Tierramérica) - Exotic tree seedlings grow next to native species in the southeastern German village of Laufen, at a site where researchers are experimenting with ways to restore forests lost to the effects of global warming.
(more…)

Robert Tait - The Guardian UK

Death reopens debate over ‘honour’ killings in Turkey, which account for half of all the country’s murders

Istanbul, Thursday 4 February 2010 . Turkish police have recovered the body of a 16-year-old girl they say was buried alive by relatives in an “honour” killing carried out as punishment for talking to boys.
(more…)

By Marcos Terena (*)

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jan (IPS) In-mid January, the United Nations issued its first World Report on the condition of the indigenous
peoples, which have made progress and won recognition internationally but not at the national and local level, where their demands remain unmet.
(more…)

RAMESH JAURA Talks To UN Under-Secretary-General KIYO AKASAKA

IDN-InDepth NewsInterview

BERLIN/NEW YORK (IDN) - Imagine blockbusters made in Bollywood and Hollywood with disarmament, climate change, millennium development goals and women as central themes – and the opening scenes showing a sign that says: “United Nations. It’s your world.”
(more…)

Boaventura de Sousa Santos (*)

At the end January 2010, there was an important evaluation of the ten years of the World Social Forum (WSF) in Porto Alegre (Brazil), including a debate on its future. At the same time, many events took place in seven cities in the metropolitan region, which gathered more than thirty thousand people. The major media did not report on this. They rather inundated their readers with details about the meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) taking place in Davos. This is odd, since the analyses and previsions of the WSF during the last decade turned out to be much more precise than those advanced by the WEF.
(more…)

By Wangari Maathai (*)

NAIROBI, Jan (IPS) For years, we have been hearing African leaders calling for African solutions to African problems. And for many more years, we have been waiting to see our leaders rise to the occasion and demonstrate strong leadership to resolve the many conflicts that are plaguing our continent.
(more…)

By Supachai Panitchpakdi (*)

GENEVA, Dec (IPS) In many respects, the diffusion of information and communication technologies (ICTs) continues to be a great development success story. Over the past four years we have witnessed dramatic growth in the use of various ICT applications, notably mobile phones. Developing-country populations now account for more than half of all Internet users. Improved connectivity has also enabled more firms to gain access to critical information, finance and knowledge -all key factors for enhancing competitiveness.
(more…)

BY RONALD JOSHUA

IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

BERLIN/PARIS (IDN) - China is leading the world economy out of recession and the country is poised to overtake the United States to become the leading producer of manufactured goods in the next five to seven years.

This is not an excerpt from a report by a government ministry in Beijing but the upshot of the Economic Survey of China, the second since 2005, by the 30-nation Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) based in Paris.
(more…)

By Candido Grzybowski (*)

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jan (IPS) The secret of the vitality of the World Social Forum (WSF) lies in the fact that it is organised as an open space which, without renouncing its original mission of challenging neoliberalism, proposes to recharge the batteries of citizen activism, which is now necessary on a planetary scale if the earth is to move beyond the current mode of extreme capitalism. This process is underway and is following its own course, led by organisations and social movements and networks around the world.
(more…)

BY TATJANA BAUMANN

IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

BRUSSELS (IDN) – Backed by energy-related corporations, the European Commission and individual European countries are backing nuclear power resurgence in Europe and beyond its borders.

This is indicated by the launching of the European Nuclear Energy Leadership Academy (ENELA) and the signing of bilateral agreement between Spain and Jordan to cooperate in the field of the peaceful use of nuclear energy, including for power generation and water desalination.
(more…)

ANSA

Netanyahu says premier is one of Israel’s ‘greatest friends’

(ANSA) - Jerusalem, February 1 - Visiting Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi said on Monday that his ‘dream’ was to see Israel become a member of the European Union.
(more…)

By Hazel Henderson

ST. AUGUSTINE, FLORIDA, Jan (IPS) The radical decision of the US Supreme Court on January 21, 2010, allows companies to spend unlimited money in politics. Overturning 100 years of restraint on corporate spending, the two newest justices, John Roberts and Samuel Alito, appointed by former President George W. Bush, have turned the court into an ally of big corporations.
(more…)