World Analysis Newswire Archive

There’s a lot to be said for having progressive targets in all sorts of things, foremost among these is reducing the amount of climate changing gas being poured into the atmosphere; so when, for instance, a government (like that of the UK) says that it will aim to reduce the amount of carbon the nation is sending into the atmosphere by 80% by the year 2050, then it’s good to know that somewhere down the line people are going to check that they are on target. That said, of course 80% by 2050 is hopelessly inadequate, given that that only a net reduction in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere - as distinct from the amount being emitted - by, say, 2050, will have any chance of preventing the worst effects of climate change.

‘We seem to be suffering from an empathy deficit – our ability to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes, to see the world through those who are different from us.’ – Barack Obama

Occasionally – just occasionally – a mainstream politician says something that is both original and useful. This is the case with Barack Obama’s views on empathy. In a thousand speeches, and in his book The Audacity of Hope, he has put cultivating empathy – learning to see the world from the perspective of others – at the centre of his moral and political vision.

I am inclined to praise him because I believe we should view the problem of tackling climate change not as an environmental issue, or one concerning technology or social justice or markets, but primarily as a problem of empathy. We must learn to see the individuals behind the newspaper headlines about climate change, and imagine ourselves into the uniqueness of their lives, developing an understanding of their most important experiences, beliefs, fears and hopes.Sound far-fetched, wishy-washy or a little too sandals-and-carrot-juice for your liking? Let me explain myself.

Dust of Tuesday’s voting battle settled down and the battle of forming the next Israeli government has just begun. With Benjamin Netanyahu poised for premiership and Avigdor Lieberman, leader of a “racist and fascist” party (as condemned by Talia Sasson of the Merez party) very well positioned to be the king or queen maker of the next ruling coalition, the Palestinian people and the whole region will have to brace as from next March for an Israeli government of war.

A weekly 30 minute review of news and opinion, recorded from a shortwave radio. With times and freqs for listening at home. 2 files- broadcast and slow-modem streaming. Free to rebroadcast. China, Netherlands, Cuba, and Russia.

It isn’t too soon to protest. He told us right away that there is no change we can believe in. We don’t have to wait for bombs to fall on Iran or for more prisoners to be denied their human rights.

It is time to take not only Obama to task, but faux progressives to task as well. They are the Obamites who claimed they would hold his feet to the fire if we would just shut up and let him get elected. It is time to protest against them too and call them out for being the hypocrites they are.

More than 1000 people, including 920 elected delegates, attended the inaugural congress of Power of the Masses Party (PLM) on January 30.

The delegates represented mass organisations of workers, urban poor, peasants, students, street vendors, jeepney and tricycle drivers, women and senior citizens — a mass base estimated at 300,000 according to PLM leaders.

The Chinese government is facing a massive unemployment crisis, far worse than in the late 1990s, when lay-offs of more than 30 million workers from state enterprises led to a wave of militant protests. This time, the growing army of unemployed mainly consists of internal migrant workers from the countryside, who have been hit hard by plunging export orders in the urban manufacturing centres and the collapse of the construction boom.

The man is in a corner, his party in a hole, the opposition lining up to take on the government’s toxic debts and Ireland once again is in an economic shithole that was brought about by political representatives who neither knew how to spend wisely nor how to manage properly, in case of a rainy day, the state’s finances.

Addressing a national television audience in his first White House press conference, President Barack Obama, promoting his economic stimulus plan, used unprecedented language to characterize the deepening economic crisis. He described conditions of rapidly rising unemployment, growing demand at food banks, widespread foreclosures, the collapse of consumer spending and the failure of small businesses.

In October 2008 NATO would drop the last veil and expose what the ultimate purpose of the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative was: Preparing for possible military action againt Iran.

Jean-Michel Boucheron, then outgoing chairman of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly’s Mediterranean and Middle East Special Group, said "that while Nato states did not have the same obligation to defend GCC countries as they would other alliance members in the event they were attacked, Nato would 'not remain indifferent' if a Gulf country were subject to aggression.

Until 2006, the Israeli-Palestinian political landscape was dominated almost exclusively by three major players: the Labor and Likud parties in Israel, and the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s (PLO) largest faction, Fatah. That year brought a dramatic change, however, with the success of Israel’s newly formed Kadima party in the elections for the 17th Knesset and of Hamas in the Palestinian legislative elections.

At the centre of this weekend’s 45th Munich Security Conference was the speech given by the new US Vice President Joe Biden on Saturday. His speech had been keenly anticipated by the assembled audience of 300 leading politicians and state officials, including 13 heads of government and state and 50 ministers. They were eager to hear of the new content of US foreign policy under President Barack Obama and evinced a desire for the revival of transatlantic collaboration.

In his weekly radio address Saturday, President Barack Obama endorsed the compromise stimulus plan worked out by a small group of Republican senators, right-wing Democratic Senator Ben Nelson and “independent Democrat” Joseph Lieberman, a fervent supporter of the war in Iraq who backed Republican presidential candidate John McCain against Obama in the November elections.

Ever since Hamas was voted into power in Gaza as a protest vote against Fatah (the same reason why the MB won so many seats in the Egyptian parliamentary elections), and democracy in the Palestinian territories has suffered a major blow. The blow became a full on gushing head wound the moment Hamas started its coup, and kicked the Fatah people out, create what got immediately dubbed Hamastan. And ever since that day, the blockade went up and stayed up, and some of us, including me, cheered, thinking it was a fitting punishment for big bad Hamas, and that soon enough there would be a second election, I even hoped for an open revolt, where the Palestinian people would throw out Hamas from power on its fat Jihady ass. In the throngs of our self-righteous indignation and punishment, we forgot that Hamas, now that it is in power, was going to do what every islamist organization in power would do: Destroy the democratic institutions that brought them there, and clamp down to solidify their power big time. And that's what they did.

Economic recession, not only threw Iceland into the throes of bankruptcy, political protests against the social crisis, now even toppled its government. Obviously, because of structural recession, elsewhere this type of economic collapse will continue . Will Ukraine be next? And finally, who?

You have an economy in shambles, increasing international isolation, the danger of further wars, an unpopular millenarian president who thinks God put him in office to reshape the world, and an alarmed public across the board. And you have a liberal challenger to the woeful status quo who is known for an ability to reach out to conservatives and a dislike of social polarization, who is wildly popular with youth, women and liberals, but who might attract even conservative votes. Sound familiar? I am talking about Iran.

“Global warming my ass! It’s freezing! Al Gore sure is taking you people for a ride!” I’ve heard comments along these lines for months now, ever since normal late fall/early winter temperatures set in. Check the comments on any local news story about a snowstorm, and you’ll find at least a handful of people who believe that because it’s snowing during winter in the Northern Hemisphere, global warming can’t possibly be real.

First quote from  http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/

Using an inside source, an Israeli libertarian communist constructs an analysis of the picture behind the scenes at the recent wildcat of Israel Railways workers.

This is a response to a particularly bad Foreign Affairs article in which Collier, author of The Bottom Billion, suggests that what we need to combat hunger is to throw the peasant off the land, bring machinery to bear on agriculture, and plant GM crops.

It is, as Aal et al note, a full-speed backward vision of agriculture, filled with wild fantasies of infinite production and zero environmental or social consequences. Frankly, it's a Stalinist vision, one that owes more to the dreams and delusions of the 1950s than anything else. In the next issue of Foreign Affairs, Paul Collier presents his solution to the transportation crisis: nuclear-powered flying cars.