THE MAIN PROBLEM WITH GLOBALISATION IS TOO LITTLE GOVERNANCE

By Pascal Lamy (*)

GENEVA, Jul (IPS) Globalisation dominates our era, but it is an increasingly fragile dominance. Even as global integration delivers enormous benefits -growing wealth, spreading technology, the rise of billions of people in the developing world- it also creates new risks -financial instability, economic imbalances, environmental stresses, growing inequalities, cyber penetration- that we seem to have difficulty managing.

The Huge, Inhuman Power of The Real ‘War Lords’

By Baher Kamal | Human Wrongs Watch

Politicians in rich countries use to cry to the sky and tear their hair out, warning against migrants and refugees’ alleged extraordinary threats and exceptional danger, while blaming them for all the troubles that their obedience to the “market lords” and the “war lords” has been causing.

The Global Climate Regime on the Brink

By Martin Khor*

IDN-InDepth NewsViewpoint

GENEVA (IDN) – We agreed in Bali in December 2007 to build a much stronger international climate regime to better cope with recent alarming analysis of the disastrous effects of climate change. But instead of achieving this new regime, we now see quite unbelievably an attempt to dismantle even the weaker regime that we now have.

Ban’s Second Term: The Case for a Woman Secretary-General

By Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury*

 EW YORK, Jun 20, 2011 (IPS) – Last Friday’s recommendation to give the incumbent U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon another five-year term drew the international community’s attention to another opaque, non- democratic process that is the hallmark of the 15-member Security Council’s decision-making.

CUBA: Economic Reforms Hitting Women Hard

By Dalia Acosta

HAVANA,  (IPS) – Women in Cuba are gaining ground in public life and earn the same wages as men. But the gender gap in the workplace is still a challenge for women, who are finding the odds more heavily stacked against them as the government of Raúl Castro adopts economic reforms aimed at “updating” the country’s socialist system.

Massive popular uprising in Greece

Yorgos Mitralias*

Two weeks after it started the Greek movement of ‘outraged’ people has the main squares in all cities overflowing with crowds that shout their anger, and makes the Papandreou government and its local and international supporters tremble. It is now more than just a protest movement or even a massive mobilization against austerity measures. It has turned into a genuine popular uprising that is sweeping over the country. An uprising that makes known at large its refusal to pay for ‘their crisis’ or ‘their debt’ while throwing the two big neoliberal parties, if not the whole political world into complete disarray.

Africans Best Suited to Drive African Development

By Jerome Mwanda/IDN-InDepth NewsReport

LONDON (IDN) – A new global research project has come up with an upbeat message that sounds like a truism: “Progress in African development happens best when it is led by African states and citizens”. This message emerges from industrious research by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI).

Growth with social justice: Time for a new era

By Juan Somavia (*)

GENEVA, Jun (IPS) More than 200 million people are officially unemployed worldwide, including nearly 80 million young women and men eager to secure their first job. Both figures are at their highest points ever, but this is only the tip of the iceberg. The number of workers in vulnerable employment – 1.5 billion (around half of the world’s labour force) – and persons working but surviving on less than US$2.00 per day – 1.2 billion – is on the rise again.

Erdogan’s economic trump card

Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Istanbul. If, as expected, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan wins a third term in Sunday’s general election, he will become the most successful democratic leader in Turkey’s history. So what explains his extraordinary dominance of Turkish politics?

On an international stage, the prime minister often cuts an awkward, slightly defensive figure, tall, but stiff and unsmiling. On his home turf, though, he comes alive, responding with jokes, sarcasm and even poetry to the crowds of supporters who pack his rallies.

AIDS Funding Gap Threatens Treatment Targets

By Elizabeth Whitman

UNITED NATIONS, (IPS) – A staggering nine million people are still awaiting HIV treatment, yet the 22 billion dollars the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) says is needed to give them access to medicine and care has far from materialised.

When the Nile Runs Dry

By LESTER R. BROWN – NYT

A NEW scramble for Africa is under way. As global food prices rise and exporters reduce shipments of commodities, countries that rely on imported grain are panicking. Affluent countries like Saudi Arabia, South Korea, China and India have descended on fertile plains across the African continent, acquiring huge tracts of land to produce wheat, rice and corn for consumption back home.

Bike vs Car on a Hot Planet

By Stephen Leahy

BERLIN, Jun 6, 2011 (IPS) – As global carbon emissions hit record-high levels last year, officials from leading Asian nations told the 2011 International Transport Forum in nearby Leipzig that their citizens want more cars.

Africa Looks Poised for Second Independence

By Alemayehu G. Mariam*

IDN-InDepth NewsViewpoint

SAN BERNARDINO, USA (IDN) – For much of the six decades of independence, much of Africa has been under the thumbs and boots of ruthless military and civilian thugs palming themselves off as leaders while sucking the continent dry as their private estate. There have been over 80 military coups in Africa and hundreds of attempted, plotted and alleged coups.

AS KYOTO EXPIRATION NEARS, EMISSIONS TRADING SHOWN INEFFECTIVE

By Hazel Henderson (*)

SAINT AUGUSTINE, May (IPS) The Kyoto Protocol expires at the end of 2012. Its global focus on CO2 emissions and trading schemes based in London and other financial centres has grown suspect.

World Bank’s Africa Strategy Remains in Rutted Comfort Zone

By Patrick Bond -ZSpace Page

A renewed wave of development babble began flowing soon after the February launch of the World Bank’s ten-year Strategy document, “Africa‘s Future and the World Bank‘s Support to It”. Within three months, a mini-tsunami of Afro-optimism swept in: the International Monetary Fund’s Regional Economic Outlook for SubSaharan Africa, the Economic Commission on Africa’s upbeat study, the African World Economic Forum’s Competitiveness Report, and the African Development Bank’s discovery of a vast new “middle class” (creatively defined to include the 20% of Africans whose expenditures are $2-4/day).

Court stops mining projects in indigenous territories

Hernán Scandizzo

So far this year two Argentine court decisions reinforced the requirement of consultation prior to any legislative or administrative action affecting indigenous peoples.

The decisions by the Court of First Instance and the Superior Court of Justice, or STJ, in the southern province of Neuquén, regarding the Mapuche communities of Huenctru Trawel Leufú and Mellao Morales, are important in Argentina, where very few rulings address these issues, and where consultation is not instituted as a State practice. The verdicts halt the development of two mining projects, one for hydrocarbons and another for metal mining.

Water Emerges as a Hidden Weapon

By Simba Russeau

CAIRO, May 27, 2011 (IPS) – Libya’s enormous aquatic reserves could potentially become a new weapon of choice if government forces opt to starve coastal cities that heavily rely on free flowing freshwater.

The Republican Short List

Patricio Navia* – Buenos Aires Herald

The Republican Party is finally narrowing down its list of presidential candidates that will compete for the party nomination starting with the Iowa caucus of February 6, 2012 and the New Hampshire primaries of February 14, 2012. In recent weeks, a few hopefuls have formally thrown their hats into the ring and a larger number has formally announced that they will not seek the nomination. Going over their names tells a story of formidable strengths and evident weaknesses of the opposition party.

Search for new IMF boss: Intrigues rage on

Editor Business Services – The Guardian

Wednesday, 25 May 2011 . MERIT, not nationality, should determine, who replaces Dominique Strauss-Kahn as the chief of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the finance ministers of Australia and SA said in a joint statement recently.

Hotel Maids Say Sexual Harassment Is Part of the Job

By Aline Cunico

NEW YORK, May 23, 2011 (IPS) – With the arrest of the once powerful head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Dominique Strauss-Kahn, following allegations that he raped a maid in his 3,000-dollar-a-night penthouse suite at the Sofitel Hotel, a spotlight has been turned on the treatment of female cleaning staff, many of whom are immigrants who keep silent for fear of losing their jobs or being deported.

Goldstone and Gaza: What’s Still True

David Shulman – The New York Review of Books

May , 2011. UN investigator Richard Goldstone visiting the destroyed house where members of the al-Samouni family were killed during Israel’s Operation Cast Lead, Gaza City, June 3, 2009

Do One Thing for Diversity and Inclusion

By Irina Bokova and Jorge Sampaio*

UNITED NATIONS, May 20, 2011 (IPS) – All cultures and civilisations contribute to the enrichment of humankind. Human beings must respect one another in all their diversity of belief, culture and language. Differences within and between societies should be neither feared nor repressed but cherished as a precious asset of humanity.

In Search of a Lonely Planet

by Tony Wheeler – Newsweek

With 6 billion people and counting, our planet is more crowded than ever—but hidden corners still exist.

In late 1972, my wife and I had spent six months traveling through Asia when we landed in Bangkok from Calcutta. We’d bought an old car in London, driven it all the way to Kabul, sold it for a small profit, and carried on east by whatever transport came our way. We didn’t realize it at the time, but a travel revolution was about to take place in the region. In the next 40 years, travel was going to be on a dramatic growth curve everywhere in the world, but nowhere would the change be as great as in Southeast Asia.

The Lonely Plight of the Whistleblower

By Elizabeth Whitman

NEW YORK, May 18, 2011 (IPS) – “Few paths are more treacherous than the one that challenges an abuse of power,” warns “A Handbook for Committing the Truth: The Corporate Whistleblower’s Survival Guide” – a primer not only for whistleblowers but for corporate leaders and citizen activists as well, say authors Tom Devine and Tarek Maassarani.

Call for Transparency and Merit in Picking Next IMF Head

By J. Chandler/IDN-InDepth NewsReport

TORONTO (IDN) – A global coalition of campaigners is calling for an open and merit-based process to elect the next head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) after its Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn, locked up on charges of sexually assaulting a maid in his posh hotel suite in Washington, resigned amid rising calls to step down.