Peace &
nonviolence
•
Interfaith
efforts for peace and solving global
problems
Think globally, act locally" is a mantra for activists
of all kinds seeking to improve their communities and
shape a better future. The United Religions Initiative
(URI) - which was launched officially this week in
Pittsburgh, Pa., with a charter-signing ceremony - has
already patterned this theme on six continents.
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World
Summit for Social Development ended in
Geneva
Here is the site that offers all you want to know.
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Overcoming
violence
An interesting site by the World Council of Churches.
In December 1998, The eighth assembly of the World
Council of Churches gathered in Harare, Zimbabwe, to
discern priorities and programmes for the next seven
years. Around the Assembly theme, 'Turn to God -
Rejoice in Hope', delegates established the Decade to
Overcome Violence (DOV). The Assembly stated that we
must "work strategically with the churches on these
issues of nonviolence and reconciliation to create a
culture of nonviolence, linking and interacting with
other international partners and organizations, and
examining and developing appropriate approaches to
conflict transformation and just peace-making in the
new globalized context...
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Positive
News & Living Lightly
Tired of news being only bad news? Here is a couple of
publications that will make you happy to see all the
wonderful things that happen - which your mainstream
media won't even mention.
•
Changemakers
Library, Tools for Social Change
A comprehensive guide to the rapidly growing
profession of social entrepreneurship.
Changemakers.net provides resources, inspiring ideas
and opportunities for social entrepreneurs and those
interested in learning more about innovative social
change.
Armament and the
new Cold War
•
Beijing
warns Albright against national missile
defence
The US secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, faced
tough talking yesterday in Beijing as Chinese experts
warned that American plans for a national missile
defence shield would compromise their security. China
welcomed her with the sharp message that it would be
forced to increase its nuclear arsenal if the US went
ahead with its plan.
Globalization -
imperialism
•
The
Jubilee 2000 project
A debt relief campaign launched a report Monday
accusing wealthy nations of failing to hold to their
promises, according to the Financial Times. The study,
issued by Jubilee 2000, reports that only $15 billion
in debt relief will be provided by the Welcome to the
most exciting and important challenge you will ever
face. The challenge, if you dare, is this: Read the
Jubilee 2000 Radical Agenda for Global Social
Transformation, and then either support its objective
of transforming global society by the year 2000 or try
to come up with a good reason why you won't.
•
The
G8 Okinawa Summit coming up
Schedule of the Meetings of Foreign Ministers.
Establishment of the Kyushu-Okinawa Summit NGO Center.
International Symposium on Information Technology and
Development Cooperation (Live Broadcast). Schedule of
the Meetings of Heads of State and Government.
International Symposium on Perspectives of the 21st
Century -Beyond the Century of Confrontation. Young
Leaders Summit 2000 in Okinawa (Updated). World
Economic Symposium: Asia in the Global Economy of the
21st Century. International Symposium "The Role of
NGOs in Conflict Prevention". G8 Youth Summit, Okinawa
2000
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Confronting
apartheid in the world
At the South Summit in Havana, leaders of developing
nations collectively condemned the World Bank (WB),
the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World
Trade Organisation (WTO) as agents of the North's
neo-liberal economic policy-makers. Leaders of the G77
-- a UN-affiliated body representing 133 Third World
nations and 80 per cent of the world's population --
held the WB, the IMF and the WTO responsible for
creating conditions of abject poverty in the South and
dramatically increasing the disparity between rich and
poor.
The Balkans and
Kosovo/a -
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New
power boost for Milosevic
Both houses of parliament overwhelmingly approved
changes to the constitution put forward by the ruling
coalition, which will allow the Yugoslav leader to run
for office again when his term expires next year. It
will also furhter reduce the power of Montenegro - and
increase tension in the Balkans.
•
Kosovo
Albanian leader Thaci withdraws from Interim
Administration
Kosovo Albanian leader, Hashim Thaci, has pull his
Democratic Party of Kosovo, PDK, out of the province's
joint administration after Serb representatives agreed
to rejoin the institution only on a limited basis.
Thaci, the former leader of the Kosovo Liberation
Army, said the PDK had withdrawn from the Interim
Administrative Council to "reflect" on the June 29
'Understanding' between the Serb National Council and
the UNMIK chief, Bernard Kouchner, which paved the way
for the SNC's return to the institution for three
months as observers. The 'Understanding' makes several
recommendations to improve the lot of the province's
beleaguered Serbian minority.
•
Questions
raised over Racak massacre last year in
Kosovo
At the time, William Walker, the head of the
International Observer Mission in Kosovo, said the
civilians had been executed and mutilated. Western
leaders accused the Serbs of committing crimes against
humanity.
Now, a team of Finnish pathologists isn't so sure
that's what really happened in the tiny village.
CBC Radio News has learned an autopsy report reveals
no evidence the 40 bodies were intentionally
mutilated. Only one of them showed any sign of being
killed at close range.
•
Proposed
anti-terrorist law directed against the Yugoslav
opposition
Read what esteemed lawyers and the opposition in
Belgrade think about the proposed law. Some say it "is
culmination of abuse of law by the state against its
citizens," others that it is the end of the legal
state and the prelude to forbidding political
parties.
•
...but
then Milosevic made a U-turn
Yugoslavs are still recoiling this week from the shock
of the abrupt withdrawal of a repressive
anti-terrorism bill from the federal parliamentary
programme. Most expected the adoption of the bill,
which would have granted the authorities sweeping
powers, to be a formality, as the regime had spent
months preparing the population for the controversial
legislation with a concerted propaganda campaign on
state TV and radio. Several theories for the U-turn
have emerged.
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Continuing
Balkan instability and increasing
crime
Senior international law enforcement officials have
expressed new concern about the rise in criminal
activity in the Balkans, especially drug trafficking.
A leading UN crime-fighting official says the global
nature of trafficking highlights the need for
universal jurisdiction, to allow authorities to
prosecute it anywhere.
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Open
Letter to Carla del Ponte, the Hague
Tribunal
"You cannot negate the physical evidence of
destruction from the air in Yugoslavia (which still
includes in theory Kosovo itself), enshrined with
pictures, names, dates and targets actually hit. The
Yugoslav government has published four factual volumes
that need no further discussion about authenticity. No
one can deny that civilian targets have been
extensively hit. Figures for civilian deaths and for
those injured more or less seriously do vary. Some
3000 dead have been claimed at the maximum with three
times that number for the maimed. On the lowest end
about 300 dead and some 2,000 injured are on hand. We
even have a visually recorded tragedy in the
complaints of General Clark that NATO's civilian
authorities would not allow him to "further extend"
the number of civilian targets, another item of
evidence "missed." Clearly, Madame Prosecutor, your
entire case for rejection rests only on the presumed
lack of INTENT to punish the Serb civilians. The
intent is clearly admitted by the U.S. Secretary of
State more than a year after the bombs started falling
on civilian targets in Yugoslavia. The INTENT WAS TO
ACTUALLY PUNISH YUGOSLAVIA." - writes history
professor emeritus Raymond Kent.
What was the truth
then? What is it today? The role of the
media
•
How
Big Brothers used Orwell to fight the Cold
War
A 79-page FBI dossier released on George Orwell
reveals how the British author of Animal Farm and 1984
was used by both the Americans and the Russians as a
key figure in the battle for ideas for two decades
after his death in 1950. - One wonders who is used
todayt?
The US as a world
order problem
•
The
twilight of the European project
Peter Gowan's and Jeffrey St. Clair's seminal piece in
CounterPunch."One of the significant consequences of
the NATO attack on Yugoslavia is almost certainly that
it marks the end of the European project as a
political project for Western and Central Europe. That
political project could only have succeed if the
member states of the European Union had been prepared
to stick to their words and reconstruct the European
political order as a norm-based rather than a
power-politics based system, becoming democratic and
embracing the Eastern part of the continent."
•
Hidden
facts about terrorism: it's gone
down!
Nothing so well illustrates the misinformation the
Clinton administration and media have been spreading
about terrorism than a series of charts buried in the
annual report on the subject by the State Department.
While past history is not necessarily predictive of
what will happen tomorrow and adding, say, the TWA 800
crash would change the totals significantly, the
existing data on actual terrorists incidents compiled
by State provides a powerful indictment of White House
and media fearmongering.
Humanism, human
rights and "humanitarian" intervention
•
The
rich live longer, the poor die
younger
The mapping of the human genome may hold out the
prospect of life expectancy in the west nudging 100
but it comes far too late for countries where poverty,
war and HIV/Aids have turned the clock back on
development by decades, the UN says in a report
published today.
Its annual assessment of progress in 174 states finds
that the super-rich are not only getting richer, they
are living longer as well.
While the income gap between rich and poor countries
continues to widen, the lifespan in some sub-Saharan
Africa countries is only half that in the developed
world.
World future,
sustainability and strategy
•
The
World Bank voids its own policies in loan to
China
Raising doubts about World Bank reform efforts, a new,
hard-hitting internal report accuses the bank of
violating its own environmental and human rights
policies when it approved a rural-poverty project that
affects ethnic Tibetans and Mongolians in China.
The Washington-based international-aid agency, under
fire from Congress and from activists who staged
massive demonstrations against it in April, responds
that it has instituted new policies to ensure that its
projects do not unduly harm the environment or
indigenous populations.
•
Stratfor's
forecast on oil prices, Milosevic, Kosovo, China and
more
In the coming months, world events will be shaped by
an unfolding game of alliances. After consolidating
power at home, the new government in Moscow will look
abroad, seeking investment from the West and competing
to a certain degree with China. After a long dormant
period, American interest in the world will be renewed
with the pressures of a presidential campaign; one of
those pressures will be found in the price oil. And
Washington is likely to bring its own pressure to bear
on friendly governments in Latin America and the
Persian Gulf to control those prices before the
November elections.
WIRE Editor
Jan Oberg with TFF
Associates
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