Opinions

It’s amazing, just amazing, this international system! It presumably has a world Parliament made of delegates from all countries on Earth and called the General Assembly of the United Nations. Such a Parliament is led by a mini executive body of only five countries, called the Security and Peace Council.
By Baher Kamal*.

Over 45 countries, ranging from sophisticated economies to developing nations, were actively considering embarking upon nuclear power programmes. Whether the shocking experience Japan is undergoing despite its hi-tec reactors, will have impact policy makers in countries striving to build atomic power plants and others which already have these, remains to be seen.

The dramatic events in Egypt, Middle East & North Africa have seen millions taking to the streets to demand real change.
Women are standing beside men, demanding end to repression and calling for root and branch reform. Both women and men have suffered under repressive governments. But women have also coped with discriminatory laws and deeply entrenched gender inequality.

On March 3 and 4, a group of teenagers and pre-teens in Springfield underwent what was called a “30-hour famine”. They fasted for 30 consecutive hours, breaking only occasionally for sips of water as nourishment.
They also participated in activities that required physical effort, just as the poor in food insecure countries would, even when enduring the pangs of hunger.

In contrast with what is happening in Egypt and Tunisia, Libya occupies the first spot on the Human Development Index for Africa and it has the highest life expectancy on the continent. Education and health receive special attention from the State. The cultural level of its population is without a doubt the highest. Its problems are of a different sort.

International Women’s Day – March 8, 2011 – is a special day meant to remind everyone that women continue to have particular disadvantages even today, despite general emancipation, owing to the unnecessary restrictions in our male-dominated societies. More than that, womens’ rights continue to be severely curtailed in many places.

The success of popular movements in the Middle East has raised the apprehensions of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which has been reminded of its own weakness and soft underbelly.
President Hu Jintao has issued orders to party officials to “solve prominent problems which might harm the harmony and stability of the society.”
By Gunjan Singh*

Strange as this may sound, there is a mainstream in the unsanctioned confederacy of dictators. Whether of the present times or from the distant past, the mainstream dictator is usually decidedly understated, more often than not a loner, eccentric in private habits, and almost as a trademark, lives in a complex world of paranoia.
By Eskinder Nega

Latin America is definitely on the move: there are multiple events taking place in political, economic, social, cultural, ethnic, institutional, religious and spiritual fields, showing a new moment.
Here we publish the complete transcription of the lecture given at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem by Tomás Hirsch, humanist Latin American leader.

After arriving in the United States, Espinet continued working with other exiled Siloists from Argentina and Chile in the Universal Humanist movement. He met Trudi at one of their gatherings in 1986, and they spent 25 years together, working and raising their five children, living in San Francisco, Argentina and finally Davis.