By Mario Soares (*) LISBON, Dec (IPS) Latin America is undergoing a process of accelerated transformation. Considered the “backyard of the United States” for much of the last century, it suffered a string of coups d’etat and dictatorships, many piloted… Continue Reading
By Fareed Zakaria | NEWSWEEK From the magazine issue dated Jan 4, 2010 Remember Iraq? For months our attention has been focused on Afghanistan, and you can be sure that the surge will be covered exhaustively as it unfolds in… Continue Reading
By Jacqueline Stevens This article appeared in the January 4, 2010 edition of The Nation. “If you don’t have enough evidence to charge someone criminally but you think he’s illegal, we can make him disappear.” Those chilling words were spoken… Continue Reading
Daksha Warty RANMALA, India, Dec 22 (IPS) – The villages of Ranmala, Nandagane, Shirgaon and Mengdewadi, in Pune, Sangli and Satara districts, western India, have one thing in common.They are all headed by female sarpanches (village chiefs), and what a… Continue Reading
IRIN MANNAR, 18 December 2009 (IRIN) – Progress is being made in clearing landmines to allow internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Sri Lanka’s north to return home, but clearance will ultimately be a long-term process with no fixed deadline, agencies… Continue Reading
By Liza Jansen IPS interviews ROBERT CARLIN, North Korea expert UNITED NATIONS, Dec 21 (IPS) – North Koreans are not as isolated from the world as the United States thinks, and in fact understand the U.S. better than the U.S.… Continue Reading
By Fareed Zakaria | NEWSWEEK From the magazine issue dated Dec 21, 2009 Why terrorism and economic turmoil won’t keep the world down for long One year ago, the world seemed as if it might be coming apart. The global… Continue Reading
By Johan Galtung (*) OSLO, Dec (IPS) In George Orwell’s 1984, Big Brother issues the infamous slogan, “War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength.” Is that where we have now arrived?
By Claudia Ciobanu IPS/TerraViva* interviews KUMI NAIDOO, head of Greenpeace International COPENHAGEN, Dec 17 (IPS) – “Climate change is an opportunity to deal with all the issues of equity and justice that we have been struggling for all along,” said… Continue Reading
ANSA Florence, December 17 – Italy’s obligation to grant asylum to refugees is a binding international requirement, not a European imposition, the country’s president Giorgio Napolitano said on Thursday.
By William Fisher NEW YORK, Dec 15 (IPS) – Human and rights advocates and members of the Republican Party found unusual common ground Monday. Both registered strong objections to the announcement that the Barack Obama administration would be transferring detainees… Continue Reading
From The Economist print edition The Copenhagen climate talks : Arguments over money dampened the euphoria that marked the start of talks on a global deal to limit greenhouse gases DESPITE the gloomy talk that preceded the UN climate conference,… Continue Reading
By Julio Godoy* BERLIN, Dec 15 (Tierramérica**) – In the decades since 1972, when Nobel laureate economist James Tobin (1918-2002) first proposed it, the idea of a tax on currency speculation has resurfaced and disappeared many times, according to the… Continue Reading
BY MARTIN KHOR* IDN-InDepthNews Service (IDN) – With only days to go before political leaders arrive, the Copenhagen climate summit is in the grip of a deadlock over the future of the global climate regime More than half way through… Continue Reading
BY FAREDD MAHDY* IDN-InDepthNews Service ISTANBUL (IDN) – A new book, ‘The King’s Torah’, has been published in Israel to invigorate Jewish teachings for future generations. Written by Rabbi Yitzhak Shapiro, who heads Od Yosef Chai Yeshiva religious school in… Continue Reading
by Jean Pascal van Ypersele * Ian Fry, the delegate from Tuvalu (a small island state in the Pacific Ocean), had a voice broken by emotion in the COP15 Plenary room Saturday morning when he pleaded for his country’s proposal… Continue Reading
By Mark Sommer (*) ARCATA, CALIFORNIA, Dec (IPS) The twentieth anniversary of the Berlin Wall’s fall reminded Americans of just how heady it felt when a triumphant America stood astride a collapsing Soviet empire. Two decades later, Americans find themselves… Continue Reading
BY RAMESH JAURA IDN-InDepthNews Service BERLIN (IDN) – The Danish government has achieved the dubious distinction of becoming the first in the history of climate negotiations to be bashed for “bias and secrecy†in its role as president of the… Continue Reading
By Peter Tatchell * Measuring and ranking every country’s observance of human rights would give nations an incentive to raise their game Human Rights Day is the anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) on… Continue Reading
By Kerry Kennedy, from Lago Agrio, Ecuador * LAGO AGRIO, Ecuador (IPS/TerraViva) Traces of paradise are still visible. From the air, the rainforest region in northern Ecuador – known as the Oriente – appears as silvery mist and swaths of… Continue Reading
