Opinions

Tomas Hirsch, former presidential candidate for the Chilean Humanist Party was invited by the Truman Institute of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem to talk about the present situation in Latin America. He focussed mainly on Chile as it is best known to him but also because it is a good example of the paradigm of installation of the neoliberal model and the fall of that myth.

Washington DC – Compelling advice against a hasty, unilateral decision by Israel to “bomb, bomb, bomb” Iran has come – from Israel. The advice is significant not only for what was said, but for who said it.

We may never know what drove a U.S. Army staff sergeant to head out into the Afghan night and allegedly murder at least 16 civilians in their homes, among them nine children and three women. The massacre near Belambai, in Kandahar, Afghanistan, has shocked the world and intensified the calls for an end to the longest war in U.S. history.

Goldman Sachs’s executive director’s resignation made big headlines. Accusations of corrupt and immoral practices appeared to suggest that this was a particular, perhaps isolated, case. Grateful as we are to Greg Smith for highlighting the shortcomings of the financial giant we should not be distracted from the fact that this is how the present system works.

Cairo – The women of Egypt were at the vanguard in the eighteen day January 2011 mass uprising that toppled former President Hosni Mubarak. But since then, they have been sidelined and pushed back into the shadows.

Paris – If you ask the French ministry for foreign affairs about the country’s position on a Middle East free of nuclear weapons, the spokesperson will surely refer you to the statements by the French ambassadors before the UN both in New York and Geneva, and will repeat that France supports the global application of the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

So it turns that Monsanto, one of the world’s largest profiteers of genetically engineered (GE) food, has banned GE food from its own corporate canteens!

Tullow Oil plc announced that it has completed the farm-down of two thirds of its Ugandan licences to China National Offshore Oil Corp (CNOOC) Limited and French oil major Total for $2.9 billion earlier today. The news that British firm Tullow has finally brought in partners to develop its oil fields in Uganda paves the way for commercial oil production to begin in the country.

“The president is wrong.” So says one of the newly appointed co-chairs of President Obama’s re-election campaign.
Those 4 words headline the site of the organization Progressives United, founded by former U.S. senator and now Obama campaign adviser Russ Feingold. He is referring to Obama’s recent announcement that he will accept super PAC funds for his re-election campaign.

Terrible images are circulating through the world’s media, chronicling the desperate plight of the Greek people as they try to stand up to their government and stop the destruction of their society. Kostas Klokas, who wrote for us back in September in graphic terms about a modern-day Greek tragedy and his hope for nonviolent struggle, updates his story.