Poor Countries Struggle to Mainstream Gender in Trade

Annelise Sander interviews UNCTAD officer SIMONETTA ZARRILLI
Inter Press Service

Trade affects women and men differently. Women's livelihoods, in particular, can be undermined by trade liberalisation. Despite this fact, gender analysis is usually absent from trade negotiations and agreements.

Learning from our tortured past

Tell President Obama: We need a non-partisan inquiry to make sure we don't repeat past mistakes

Today's Senate report on torture and President Obama's comments have set the wheels in motion – but we need your help to keep up the momentum towards a full reckoning on the United States' use of torture.

Call on President Obama to set up a nonpartisan inquiry to evaluate the full cost of abuses, look at how we got there, and come up with safeguards so we don’t repeat the same mistakes. The U.S. needs to invest in a forward-looking strategy on intelligence gathering that gives interrogators training and guidance on which techniques work, and which techniques – such as torture – don't.

Momentum is on our side – please let the Obama administration know that the public wants the truth about torture. Our national security depends on it.

Toward Climate Geoengineering?

Saturday 18 April 2009

by Andrew Glikson, t r u t h o u t | Perspective


That global climate change has reached an impasse whereby the "powers-to-be" are entertaining climate geoengineering mitigation, instead of the urgent deep reduction of carbon emissions required by science, represents the ultimate moral bankruptcy of institutions and a failure of democracy.

Pacifica Radio at 60: KPFA Remains a Sanctuary of Dissent Six Decades After Its Founding

Democracy Now!
April 15, 2009

Today marks the sixtieth anniversary of Pacifica Radio. On April 15th, 1949 at 3:00 p.m., a charismatic conscientious objector named Lewis Hill sat before a microphone and said, “This is KPFA Berkeley.” With that, KPFA went on the air, and the first listener-supported radio station in the United States was born. Pacifica Radio is the oldest independent media network in the United States, and its sixtieth birthday comes as a deepening crisis engulfs mainstream media. To commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of Pacifica Radio today, we feature a documentary about the first Pacifica Radio station: KPFA in Berkeley. It’s called KPFA on the Air by filmmakers Veronica Selver and Sharon Wood and narrated by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker.

Why We Don't Condemn Our Pirates in Somalia

Alternet
By K'Naan , URB Magazine. Posted April 14, 2009

...Already by this time, local fishermen in the coastline of Somalia have been complaining of illegal vessels coming to Somali waters and stealing all the fish. And since there was no government to report it to, and since the severity of the violence clumsily overshadowed every other problem, the fishermen went completely unheard. But it was around this same time that a more sinister, a more patronizing practice was being put in motion. A Swiss firm called Achair Parterns, and an Italian waste company called Progresso, made a deal with Ali Mahdi, that they could dump containers of waste material in Somali waters. These European companies were said to be paying Warlords about $3 a ton, where as in to properly dispose of waste in Europe costs about $1000 a ton.

In 2004, after Tsunami washed ashore several leaking containers, thousand of locals in the Puntland region of Somalia started to complain of severe and previously unreported ailments, such as abdominal bleeding, skin melting off and a lot of immediate cancer-like symptoms. Nick Nuttall, a spokesman for the United Nations Environmental Program, says that the containers had many different kinds of waste, including "Uranium, radioactive waste, lead, cadmium, mercury and chemical waste." But this wasn't just a passing evil from one or two groups taking advantage of our unprotected waters, the UN Convoy for Somalia, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, says that the practice still continues to this day. It was months after those initial reports that local fishermen mobilized themselves, along with street militias, to go into the waters and deter the Westerners from having a free pass at completely destroying Somalia's aquatic life. Now years later, that deterance has become less noble, and the ex-fishermen with their militias have begun to develop a taste for ransom at sea. This form of piracy is now a major contributor to the Somali economy, especially in the very region that private toxic waste companies first began to bury our nation's death trap...

'Green Revolution' Trapping India's Farmers In Debt

National Public Radio
Morning Edition
April 14, 2009

As the world's population surges, the international community faces a pressing problem: How will it feed everybody?

Until recently, people thought India had an answer.

Thousands flee bomb attacks by US drones

Daud Khattakin and Christina Lamb
Times Online
April 5, 2009

...As many as 1m people have fled their homes in the Tribal Areas to escape attacks by the unmanned spy planes as well as bombings by the Pakistani army. In Bajaur agency entire villages have been flattened by Pakistani troops under growing American pressure to act against Al-Qaeda militants, who have made the area their base...

AFTER THE SUMMIT: What Was Accomplished & For How Long?

A look at the coverage and impact of the G20 Summit that ended this week in London

Landmark Ruling Confirms Indian Reservation

RIO DE JANEIRO, Mar 19 (IPS) - Chanting "Anna Pata, Ana Yan" (Our Land, Our Mother), members of indigenous organisations and activists celebrated a Brazilian Supreme Court ruling Thursday that confirmed the borders of a huge indigenous reservation in the Amazon jungle and set an important precedent for future land disputes.