Siriel-Media

Some Thoughts on Nepal	more
Anand Swaroop Verma After the resignation of the Prime Minister, Mr Pushp Kamal Dahal ? Prachand? the political parties once again have created the situation which reminds of the days of the 12-point agreement which took place in November 2005. The 12 point understanding was reached at that time between the CPN-Maoists (which was underground and carrying out peoples' war) and seven parliamentary parties. This was a historic accord as based on this the programme which was framed that (...) - Publications
Remembering the Tiananmen Democrats (1989-2009)	more
This year marks the twentieth anniversary of the great movement of the Chinese students centered on Beijing's Tiananmen Square and the bloody suppression of this non-violent, democratic movement by the Chinese state power. Paresh Chattopadhyay Between the first-?May Fourth'- movement, 1919 till the last-?Democracy Movement' of 1989, there had been several popular movements in China with mass participation of and often leadership by the students- the most important being the 1976-?April (...) - Publications
Trade Agreement Kills Amazon Indians	more
The recent clash between indigenous peoples and Peruvian national police sends a powerful message from the Amazon jungle straight to Washington: The enormous social, political, and environmental costs of the free-trade model are no longer acceptable. Using a combined offensive of helicopter and ground forces, the police attacked a peaceful demonstration of 2,000 Wampi and Aguaruna indigenous people near the town of Bagua. The protesters belong to the interethnic Association for the (...) - Publications
The Endless War Continues	more
Since the election of Barak Obama, mainstream observers have commented the turmoil in the backrooms of the White House and the Pentagon. Apparently, the new President is trying to repair the damages done by the irresponsible and reckless moves of the Bush era and refocus the US around a new set of policies. It is going to be very tough. On a parallel track, many think that the long-term decline of the US is inevitable, partially because of its own internal fractures (economic crisis, (...) - Publications
Obama's Cairo Speech	more
Barack Obama's speech in Cairo on the 4th of June 2009 definitely lived up to expectations ? provided we agree on what could have been expected. With regard to the form, Obama fully lived up to his role as the new black and human face of America in its relation with the rest of the world in general, and with the Muslim world in particular. He respected the specifications of his mission, seeking to repair the huge damage caused to America's image and "soft power" by the previous administration (...) - Publications
The Constantly Widening Gap between Words and Deeds	more
Reuven Kaminer There are political circles and commentators who live from minute to minute. For them, every squeak from a world leader is a virtual earthquake, a real revolution. This is especially true now that we are dealing with a US president, who is handsome, articulate, and even eloquent. The present level of manipulated excitement stems from the non-revelation that Barak Obama is against settlements and for the two state solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He also sees (...) - Publications
If You Think In Terms Of A Year, Plant A Seed	more
Ohh, seed money. I only caught the first part. I have never understood why people make such a production about birthdays. On the face of it they are utterly meaningless, mere symbols; excuses to celebrate, intoxicate, evaluate, and? finally? become disenchanted and disillusioned with life for one all-too- short day of a year that, somehow, has always passed quicker than the last. All birthdays end the same way: with you waking-up the next morning writhing in pain while pleading (...) - Ides of May 2009
Kind of a BIG Deal	more
Namibia, a vast country inhabited by two million people, is one of the smaller economies in Southern Africa. It adopted a market-based economic system after achieving independence from apartheid- era South Africa in 1990. Despite creating favourable investment conditions and its high levels of political stability, Namibia, with its ample mineral and marine resources, could not break the vicious cycle of mass unemployment, inequality, and poverty. In 2002, the Namibian government (...) - Ides of May 2009
The Little Engine That Couldn't	more
Quick, send in the clowns. Don't bother, they're here. Railway Privatization in Senegal and Mali More than five years after the management of the railway connecting Dakar, the capital of Senegal, to Bamako, the capital of Mali, was yielded to the Transrail consortium, the network lies in ruins. And it is the population that is paying the price for a privatization that went off the rails. The infrastructure of the Dakar-Bamako railway is dilapidated, the accidents frequent. No (...) - Ides of May 2009
Balancing The Scales	more
Rather than getting squeezed by conventional trade, thousands of artisans and farmers around the world will have enough money to provide their families with food, shelter, education, and health care. The Fair Trade movement is a worldwide phenomenon that holds at its core the belief that people come before profits. Fair Trade is a response to the global inequalities caused by the conventional trading system that has all too often resulted in the rich becoming richer whilst the (...) - Ides of May 2009
Not Another Brick in the Wall	more
Class in session: Sakena Yacoobi drops some knowledge? and inspiration?on the IHSP. Sakena Yacoobi founded the Afghan Institute of Learning (AIL), in 1995 to ?help address the problem of poor access for women and children to education and health services, their subsequent inability to support their lives, and the impact of this lack of education and health on Afghan society.? This was the year the Taliban came to power and banned girls' education. Her goal was to ?empower poor (...) - Ides of May 2009
The 'O9 Canadian Government Herring	more
Rust-Proofing Optional It is now abundantly clear that Canada and the world is facing its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. However, a sense of premature Hoover-type optimism seems to have settled in to Ottawa's thinking, breeding a dangerous complacency that the government has done all that is required to combat the recession. The federal government appears to be hiding behind the proposition that with strong banks and strong fundamentals, the Canadian economy (...) - Ides of May 2009
You Can Never Go Home Again	more
The Crimean Tatars are a Turkic people who inhabited the Crimean peninsula? now a part of Ukraine? for over seven centuries. They established their own Khanate in the 1440s and remained an important power in Eastern Europe until 1783, when Crimea was annexed to Russia. During World War II, Stalin deported the entire Crimean Tatar population en masse to Central Asia, mainly Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. It was only after the Soviet Union collapsed that the doors of Crimea were reopened to these (...) - Ides of May 2009
:Peruvian Graffiti	more
AIJ's MR Wiseman recently read the handwriting on the wall. It belonged to artist-at-large :Peru. For a free trip, go to www.peru143.com and explore all of his creations. Your most recent mural is of a ?Diversitree?; where are your roots? From where do you derive your energy? That was my most recent ?commercial? mural? I paint a wall almost every week. My roots are spread throughout the world; I grew up in Lima, but since then I've lived in Ottawa, Montreal, Vancouver and Barcelona. (...) - Ides of May 2009
Changing the Discourse: First Step toward Changing the Policy?	more
Phyllis Bennis President Barack Obama's much-anticipated Cairo speech reflected a significant shift away from the ideological framework of militarism and unilateralism that shaped the Bush administration's war-based policy towards the Arab and Muslim worlds. His "not Bush" focus was perhaps most sharply evident in his public denunciation of the Iraq War as a "war of choice." Obama's call for a "new beginning" based on "the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in (...) - Publications
A Fascist Odor of the New Coalition	more
How lucky we are to have the extreme Right standing guard over our democracy. This week, the Knesset voted by a large majority (47 to 34) for a law that threatens imprisonment for anyone who dares to deny that Israel is a Jewish and Democratic State. The private member's bill, proposed by MK Zevulun Orlev of the ?Jewish Home? party, which sailed through its preliminary hearing, promises one year in prison to anyone who publishes ?a call that negates the existence of the State of Israel as a (...) - Rainbow of Crisis
Palestinian Students' Campaign for the Academic Boycott of Israel (PSCABI)	more
"Gaza today has become the test of our indispensable morality and common humanity." - Rainbow of Crisis
The war on civilians	more
The extension of war in Pakistan - from the Afghan border regions to Lahore - is inflicting a terrible toll on the country's poor and displaced. - Rainbow of Crisis
The Dangers of False Optimism in the Middle East	more
The recent announcement that Barack Obama will deliver a major address to the Muslim world from Cairo in early June has further heightened expectations that the new American administration is determined to achieve a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As Obama met with Benjamin Netanyahu this week, the emerging consensus among politicians and pundits alike was that the new president is prepared to invest the resources required to translate ambitious rhetoric into concrete (...) - Rainbow of Crisis
Netanyahu Chooses Warehousing	more
Would Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu say the magic words "two states" after his meeting with President Obama? All Israel held its breath. (He didn't). The gap between the two is wider than those words could ever have bridged, however. Obama, I believe, sincerely - perhaps urgently - seeks a resolution of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, a pre-condition, he understands, to getting on with larger, more pressing Middle Eastern issues. Netanyahu, who rejects even the notion of a Palestinian (...) - Rainbow of Crisis
Only diplomacy can reverse North Korea's nuclear status	more
Given the impact a nuclear Korean peninsula will have on Japan and the rest of Asia, Beijing and Washington have an incentive to formulate a joint approach towards DPRK. - Rainbow of Crisis
Can China Save the World From Depression?	more
Will China be the "growth pole" that will snatch the world from the jaws of depression? This question has become a favorite topic as the heroic American middle class consumer, weighed down by massive debt, ceases to be the key stimulus for global production. Although China's GDP growth rate fell to 6.1% in the first quarter ? the lowest in almost a decade ? optimists see "shoots of recovery" in a 30% surge in urban fixed-asset investment and a jump in industrial output in March. These (...) - Rainbow of Crisis
Too Many Palestinians!	more
The Carmel Academic Center in Haifa shut down the concentration in accounting within its Department of Business Administration because a majority of the students applying were Palestinian citizens of Israel. The Alternative Information Center (AIC) The Carmel Academic Center in Haifa shut down the concentration in accounting within its Department of Business Administration because a majority of the students applying were Palestinian citizens of Israel. This was revealed in a news item (...) - Publications
Shadow Wars	more
Sudan: The two F-16s caught the trucks deep in the northern desert. Within minutes, the column of vehicles was a string of shattered wrecks burning fiercely in the January sun. Surveillance drones spotted a few vehicles that had survived the storm of bombs and cannon shells, and the fighter-bombers returned to finish the job. Syria: Four Blackhawk helicopters skimmed across the Iraqi border, landing at a small farmhouse near the town of al-Sukkariyeh. Black-clad soldiers poured from the (...) - Publications
A Logical Defeat for the Left	more
There is a certain irony in the defeat of the Left, in particular of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPI(M), in the recent general elections. It was among the handful of communist parties in the world that survived the fall of the then existing socialism in 1989-91 and it actually grew in size in the following years. Today when capitalism is in crisis the world over, the CPI(M)-led Left in India faces its worst defeat ever. Predictably, the Left Front (LF) and CPI(M) will bring (...) - Rainbow of Crisis
Obama and two States	more
A false claim is wafting through the press: Obama is hanging tough with Benjamin Netanyahu, he's going to "twist Israel's arm" and at long last force the Jewish state into a two-state agreement, settling the Israel-Palestine question for good. There's even talk that Obama backs the Arab League's 2002 peace initiative, complete with its main demand: Israel's withdrawal to its 1967 borders. - Rainbow of Crisis
Israeli Government Obstinance Following Netanyahu's Return from Meeting in US with Obama	more
Now that Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has arrived back from his first meeting in Washington D.C. with US President, Barack Obama, the pundits are out on both sides, either filled with exuberance about the meeting as a new opening for real change and the possibility of long-term peace between the Israelis and Palestinians, or dread that it was the first step on the road to Israel's ruin. What are the substantive results of the meeting? From the US side, we won't know until we (...) - Rainbow of Crisis
The Left?s Exit: Notes for Consideration of All Concerned	more
History, at times, is a cruel reminder. Twenty years ago, 1989 signalled the impending collapse of the Soviet Union, as the Berlin wall crashed. Two years thereafter, the year 1991, watched how the USSR, together with the regimes in Eastern Europe, crumbled. Are we going to witness a repeat of this scenario, 2009 marking the beginning and 2011, the year of the Assembly elections in West Bengal, being the probable year of the erasure of the Left from Indian politics? If this catastrophe is (...) - Rainbow of Crisis
Two Funerals and a Wedding	more
There were three significant happenings this week up and down the vertical axis of the Indian Subcontinent. Up in the North, Pakistani troops battled the Taliban in Swat. As the week closed they had just begun the battle for Mingora, the capital town of the picturesque vale. Meanwhile down South on a coastal strip along the Indian Ocean, the Sri Lankan Army was concluding what is being called Eelam War IV, the final chapter ending in the elimination of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (...) - Rainbow of Crisis
On Normalization?Continued: Daniel Barenboim in Cairo	more
Last month, the great conductor Daniel Barenboim was invited for a concert in Cairo. Among his many passports, Barenboim has also an Israeli one, a fact that reopened, in Egypt, the public debate about normalization. At the Austrian Cultural Center of Cairo, the maestro tried to justify his presence in Egypt: ?I don't represent the Israeli government and I am here as a person who has never hesitated to criticize the Israeli government.? Despite Barenboim's rich record in supporting Palestinian (...) - Rainbow of Crisis