August 24, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Outrage ensued when it was announced that Europe could extract electricity from the Grand Inga dam project, in the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo, deep in sub-Saharan Africa. At present, less than 30% of the African population has access to electricity, and in some countries, the figure is below 10%. The World Bank has found that the diversion of electricity to wealthier customers in Europe may be necessary to fund the project.
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August 17, 2009 :: Mirya Dunaeva :: Comments Off
During his presidency, now Prime Minister Vladimir Putin consistently enforced a brutal policy of confronting any and all activities of separatist groups in the north Caucasus, specifically Chechnya, as issues of warfare with high national security stakes for the Russian Federation. Atrocities committed in Chechnya, both during and after the war, and including recent political killings, have yet to be fully investigated, and violence is now spreading across the north Caucasus region into other republics.
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August 16, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
Zarema Sadulayeva and her husband Alik Dzhabrailov were abducted from the headquarters of the children’s charity Save the Generation on Monday, 10 August, and found dead the following day, their bodies riddled with bullets and stuffed in the trunk of their car. The gruesome murder is the latest in a long string of killings of rights workers and activists investigating or with access to evidence about atrocities and human rights abuses in Chechnya.
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August 15, 2009 :: Denver Lessing :: Comments Off
The British government has ordered the UK-appointed governor of Turks and Caicos to suspend the ministerial government and assembly and institute direct rule, after an investigation turned up evidence of systemic official corruption. The order of direct rule will also suspend the right to jury trial in the Turks and Caicos, and the UK says the imposed rule could last up to 2 years.
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August 13, 2009 :: staff :: One Comment
Pres. Barack Obama yesterday hosted 16 new Medal of Freedom recipients at the White House, honoring their lifelong contributions to the expansion of human understanding and the promotion of individual liberty and human dignity. Among the recipients were scientists and activists, soldiers and political leaders, preachers and athletes, native Americans, African Americans, Latin Americans, Africans and Asians. The 16 laureates exemplify not only rare talent and indomitable spirit, but also a devotion to human dignity and understanding.
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August 5, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
The north Caucasus region, Sudan’s Darfur, eastern DR Congo, Sri Lanka, Iraq and North Korea, are just an example of the range of physical risks journalists are facing. How can governments and news agencies work together to ensure greater freedom and better guarantees of protection for journalists doing the most necessary and most perilous work?
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July 24, 2009 :: Riga Listin :: 2 Comments
Natalya Estemirova was a seasoned journalist and well-known human rights activist and researcher. She was one of the leading sources of information about human rights abuses and major atrocities committed in Chechnya, and was considered a leading voice against authoritarian leader Ramzan Kadyrov.
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July 19, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
The Khmer Rouge sought to establish a red Khmer empire in Cambodia, with some ambitions of expansion beyond the nation’s borders, by stamping out any human life or mind that varied from the project, as narrowly conceived by Pol Pot and his murderous regime. The “killing fields” that ensued, with the mass slaughter of an estimated 1.5 million people, were an attempt to establish a new break in time, the time before and the time after the purification —as the regime proposed— of all Cambodia.
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July 19, 2009 :: Webb Tisch :: Comments Off
Sami al-Haj, a reporter working for TV news network al-Jazeera, was jailed for six years at the Guantánamo Bay prison camp, before being cleared and released. He is now setting up a team to file suit against former Pres. George W. Bush and other officials within his administration for damages related to his imprisonment.
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July 17, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
Dear President Obama, As you are about to visit Russia at President Dmitri Medvedev’s invitation, the international press freedom organisation Reporters Without Borders would like to draw your attention to the frequency of crimes of violence against journalists in Russia and the prevailing impunity for those responsible.
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July 16, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
The Labour party government of the United Kingdom has announced plans to establish an aggressive overhaul of national energy markets, shifting to 40% low-carbon energy sourcing, across all industries, by 2020. The energy secretary, Ed Milliband, will be given control of allocation of electricity across the energy grid, in an effort to speed the green-energy revolution to allow the UK to meet its legally-binding agreed emissions cuts of 34% by 2020.
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July 15, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 4 Comments
Natalya Estemirova, from the Russian human rights organization, the Memorial Human Rights Center, was kidnapped today while leaving her home in Grozny, the Chechen capital, and later found dead. She reportedly shouted to bystanders “This is a kidnapping!” No one was able to intervene, as four armed men grabbed her and put her into a white automobile.
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July 11, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
Biodiesel is a controversial area of energy sourcing. Many believe it is a poor choice for breaking human dependence on carbon-based fuels, since it is essentially, yet another way of burning carbon to produce energy. But others say it is a healthy, incremental step, which can burn cleaner than petroleum fuels and will help diversify the scope of recycling and related inputs to the energy economy. Now chocolate is making its way into the biodiesel game.
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July 10, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
The Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute (GCCSI) was announced in L’Aquila by Australia’s premier Kevin Rudd. The GCCSI amounts to a global intergovernmental effort to produce state of the art carbon capture projects to sequester and store carbon produced by industry in the period leading up to a zero-emissions energy infrastructure. Rudd unveiled the project at the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate, convened by US president Barack Obama alongside the G8 summit of leading world economies.
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July 10, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
US president Barack Obama convened a G8-parallel Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate, comprised of 17 nations representing over 80% of the world’s industrial and consumer greenhouse gas emissions. The goal was to push governments to move their emissions and energy strategies closer to consensus for meeting bold targets for carbon emissions reductions, in anticipation of the September G20 summit in Pittsburgh and the UN climate summit at Copenhagen in December.
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July 8, 2009 :: Denver Lessing :: One Comment
Developing nations have failed to deliver the collaborative consensus sought by US president Obama and other G8 leaders in anticipation of the Copenhagen Climate Conference scheduled for later this year. While G8 leaders agreed global climate policy should be oriented toward avoiding any increase in global average temperatures of more than 3º Fahrenheit, they did not reach agreement on how to cap or reduce emissions to set levels by 2050.
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July 8, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
When Pres. Barack Obama met with his Russian counterpart, Dmitri Medvedev, the tone was optimistic, visionary, encouraging: the heads of state of the two former Cold War enemies were agreeing to historic legally binding reductions in their respective nuclear arsenals, and shifting their vocabulary toward something more akin to a consensus position on defensive weapons innovations, namely a missile shield.
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July 8, 2009 :: staff :: One Comment
The Hot Spring Network has opened a discussion, in collaboration with Café Sentido, on the need to diversify the global wheat crop in order to prevent an evolved crop fungus, Ug99, from destroying as much as 80% of the global wheat harvest.
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July 6, 2009 :: staff :: 2 Comments
Pres. Obama has arrived in Moscow to negotiate with Russian leaders a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (StART). He faces a complex process of navigating the politics of a nuclear superpower with two leaders. Some expect Obama to work with Pres. Medvedev, keeping PM Vladimir Putin more to the sidelines, or to proffer an arms control center-ground, rooted in pragmatism, which neither of Russia’s political leaders could walk away from.
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July 5, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
Barack Obama has been observing, researching and critiquing nuclear weapons policy for three decades. He seeks to put in motion the most ambitious global denuclearization effort ever conceived, grounding his approach in a hard pragmatist awareness of what drives the build-up of ever more destructive weapons arsenals. He has said throughout this year that his plans would never remove the US nuclear deterrent capability while any nuclear threat remains in the world. Now, he goes to Russia to seek a bilateral strategic arms reduction treaty.
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July 1, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The British government is planning to move ahead with the establishment of a national identity database, to which they will add the personal information of anyone applying for a new or renewed passport, starting in 2011. Despite majority opposition to establishing a biometric national ID-card system, the government appears to be using the passport registry idea to implement the national ID-card scheme “through the back door”.
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June 30, 2009 :: staff :: One Comment
A military coup that ousted democratically elected Honduran president Manuel Zelaya has come under increasing criticism across the world. The US administration of Pres. Barack Obama said the coup was illegal and called for the democratically elected president to be reinstated. Thousands of demonstrators have taken to the streets of the capital Tegucigalpa, demanding Zelaya’s return, only to be confronted by heavily armed military and police deployments.
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June 28, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 3 Comments
Iranian authorities have reportedly detained at least 8 employees of the British embassy in Tehran, saying they had been “playing major parts” in stirring up anti-Ahmedinejad sentiments. The government of Pres. Mahmoud Ahmedinejad has taken an extreme hard line on the issue of dissent over the election, accusing unarmed demonstrators of “terrorism” and calling the US president Barack Obama’s criticism of the shooting of demonstrators “unconventional, abnormal and discourteous”.
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June 24, 2009 :: staff :: 6 Comments
After a few days of relative calm, opposition demonstrators again sought to organize a rally to demand a full accounting of all ballots cast in the 12 June presidential election. Sporadic reports from the capital, Tehran, say demonstrators were confronted by a heavy security presence when trying to assemble for a pro-democracy rally. An eyewitness has reportedly said security forces were beating people like “animals”.
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June 23, 2009 :: Riga Listin :: Comments Off
The French parliament has formed an investigative panel to explore banning the wearing of a full-body veil, or burqa, in France. The move comes after Pres. Nicolas Sarkozy announced in a state of the nation address at the Palace of Versailles that “The burka is not a sign of religion, it is a sign of subservience”, adding that “It will not be welcome on the territory of the French republic”.
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June 16, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
A coalition of German firms has answered a call to study making an investment of 400 billion € in solar energy across North Africa. The plan, initiated by the Club of Rome, which has been promoting sustainable development and sustainable economic growth practices, since 1972.
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June 8, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Conservative and extreme right-wing parties gained significantly in this month’s elections for the European Parliament. Britain’s governing Labour party suffered its worst electoral performance since 1910, finishing 3rd behind the opposition Conservatives, and the hard-line anti-Europe UKIP.
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June 6, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
At dawn on June 6th, the Allies came. The best chance for victory had been for the British Royal Air Corps to take out the guns on the cliffs while airborne divisions parachuted behind enemy lines. But all did not go according to plan. Paratroopers landed miles from their mark, while the fog and clouds prevented Allied planes from destroying the guns on the cliffs. So when the ships landed here at Omaha, an unimaginable hell rained down on the men inside. Many never made it out of the boats.
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June 6, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
The European Parliamentary elections are the world’s largest transnational democratic vote, with 375 million people across 27 nations, choosing among 650 parties for 785 seats in the Parliament. It is worth asking what effect these elections, held once every 5 years for all the seats in the European Parliament, will have on EU environmental policy. Will these elections speed the spread of clean energy resources, like wind, solar and wave power, across the EU member states and neighboring states?
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June 5, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
With nearly 1 in 10 Europeans officially on unemployment, and the dream of EU integration causing “growing pains” for many nations involved, parties of the extreme right-wing are expected to gain ground in the European Parliament. Parties openly opposed to EU integration or who favor the abolishment of the European Parliament as such, have already had strong showings in the UK and the Netherlands.
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June 5, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
Pres. Barack Obama, one day after making an historic address to the Muslim world in Cairo, visited the Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald, accompanied by Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, to honor the memory of those who lost their lives in the Nazi “final solution”. Obama rebuked those who deny the historical truth of the Holocaust and urged them to come to Buchenwald to see for themselves the horror of what took place.
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June 3, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
Pride in local national governments, patriotism or objection to the whims of ‘Brussels’ cannot be the reason for such low turnout in EU elections, because the EU parliament only winds up being less accountable to the people when fewer people actually cast their ballots to elect its ministers. So what accounts for the widespread attitude of shrugging off the importance of EU elections?
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May 26, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
The isolated Communist regime of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has reportedly tested a nuclear device, raising fears its posturing could escalate or that the outcome of failed negotiations could be an attack on South Korea, US interests or other allies. Later in the day, it was reported North Korea had also launched at least 3 missiles, possibly capable of intercontinental range.
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May 15, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
As we made our way around the world we encountered love, hate, rich and poor, black and white, and many different religious groups and ideologies. It became very clear that as a human race we need to transcend from the darkness to the light and music is our weapon of the future. This song around the world features musicians who have seen and overcome conflict and hatred with love and perseverance.
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May 12, 2009 :: Riga Listin :: Comments Off
Sri Lanka’s government has expelled three reporters for the UK-based Channel 4 News. Nick Paton Walsh, producer Bessie Du and cameraman Matt Jasper, were detained by police in the town of Trincomalee, in eastern Sri Lanka, after reports highlighting the conditions facing refugees who fled the fighting between government and rebel forces.
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May 8, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The Partido Nacional Vasco (PNV) has been voted out of government in Euskadi (Spain’s Basque Country) for the first time since the fall of Franco’s fascist regime and the democratic transition that followed. An uneasy coalition of the Socialist party and the conservative Partido Popular (PP) has allowed Socialist leader Patxi López to form a government, ousting long-time lehendakari (Basque president) Juan José Ibarretxe.
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May 8, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Newt Gingrich is trying to reinvent, or rehabilitate, himself. And he’s doing it by trying to whip up reflexive anger across his party’s base. Without citing one single point of Pres. Obama’s policy or one single piece of historical evidence, he has classed Obama’s call for a world free of nuclear weapons as “a dangerous fantasy”. He is situating himself firmly in the camp of make-believe “values conservatives” whose world view is actually an adolescent reading of Machiavelli (and a fantasy already proven to be dangerous).
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May 4, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
Yi Guan —who gained worldwide fame as a virologist when he isolated the SARS virus in the masked palm civet, in specimens being sold at a feral animal market in Guangdong province, China— says the World Health Organization (WHO) was slow in responding to the outbreak of influenza A H1N1, otherwise known as swine flu. Yi has devoted most of his career to flu virology and has a doctorate in swine flu virology.
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May 4, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
As the world marked international Press Freedom Day yesterday, there was growing concern about the conditions facing journalists around the world. Reporters without Borders (RSF) has expressed concern a Tibetan editor jailed in China may be suffering torture, the American journalist Roxana Saberi is said to be frail due to an ongoing hunger strike in protest of her 8 year sentence for ‘espionage’ in Iran, and numerous heads of state are listed as ‘predators’ working against press freedom.
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May 2, 2009 :: Riga Listin :: 5 Comments
UNESCO Committee on Communication and Information representative presents award for research into press freedom. Debate discusses anti-press actions that have impeded the free flow of information about civilian suffering in war-zones ranging from Gaza to Sri Lanka to Iraq. The debate is hosted and moderated by William Horsley, of the Association of European Journalists.
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May 2, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
El gobierno de México ha ordenado cuarentena de 5 días, para interrumpir la extensión masiva del virus de influenza A H1N1, la gripe porcina. La cuarentena, si la población la sigue, tendrá el efecto de silenciar no sólo la fiesta del ayer, de la celebración del día mundial de trabajador, sino también del 5 de mayo, día de la independencia y celebración de la nación.
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April 30, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The Spanish magistrate Baltasar Garzón is now reported to be opening a preliminary investigation to the acts involved in creating the Guantánamo Bay prison camp where the Bush administration held hundreds of alleged terror suspects without charge for up to 7 years. The investigation will target “any of those that executed and/or designed a systematic plan of torture or cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of the prisoners [at Guantánamo] that were under their custody”.
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April 29, 2009 :: staff :: One Comment
Barack Obama’s first 100 days in office have been a flurry of major reforms and of global political and economic strategy. He took the oath of office on 20 January 2009 with the worst recession in 70 years setting in, major banks on the verge of insolvency, record numbers of home foreclosures, two wars in Asia, an increasingly hostile Russia and a predecessor’s policy of using torture to “enhance” interrogations. Not only has he moved forward on the economy, healthcare, security, and energy; he has reformed the entire American diplomatic paradigm, moving toward a “smart power” based on 3d vision: diplomacy, development, defense.
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April 28, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
A nation with a long, difficult experience with imperial politics, old European aristocratic dominance, ideological bloodshed and the experience of totalitarianism, Hungary joined the European Union with hopes of a rapid accession to the riches and social integration touted by the founding member states. But deep inequality between the original EU states and the new members, economic migration, and now a banking collapse, have led to widespread economic hardship, with the state seemingly less able to respond.
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April 27, 2009 :: staff :: One Comment
As the US State Dept. has issued a travel advisory warning Americans to avoid unnecessary travel to Mexico, and the two countries are screening all travelers coming from the other nation, Canada, Spain and New Zealand have reportedly confirmed at least one case each of swine flu. The multi-strain flu virus is expected to meet little immunity in the human population, which it has not previously affected in large numbers.
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April 22, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 3 Comments
Because there’s something in it for everybody. The current global nuclear weapons-control regime operates on a dangerously untenable false premise: that only ‘responsible’ nations can or should be allowed to make and maintain arsenals of nuclear warheads. At first blush, it may seem highly rational: only those who will behave responsibly should have the most dangerous weapons; but, then, upon further examination, who is qualified to make that judgment?
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April 10, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 3 Comments
In an effort to address the ongoing diplomatic crisis related to Iran’s refusal to follow certain UN mandates to cease nuclear research processes, 6 powers, including the United States, have invited Tehran to talks on how best to achieve a state of affairs acceptable to all parties and which does not allow Iran to expand the group of nuclear-armed nations. The move comes on the heels of US pres. Barack Obama’s announcement in Europe that he will initiate a program aimed at directing international treaties toward the ultimate elimination of all nuclear weapons.
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April 8, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 3 Comments
President Barack Obama, during a speech in Prague, announced his intention to embark upon the framing of a new global effort to eliminate all of the world’s nuclear weapons, admitting the goal may not be achieved for decades. The US president told his audience that the deadliest weapons known to humanity must be considered contrary to peace and stability by all humankind, and should be responsibly phased out by those powers that have them.
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April 7, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Largely ignored by the mainstream media, one major part of the president’s European tour was his insistence that the international community needs to make historic long-term commitments to food security. If made, that commitment would be perhaps the most significant security achievement of the G20 summit and Obama’s first European trip, as food insecurity poses [...]
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April 5, 2009 :: staff :: 4 Comments
When I was born, the world was divided, and our nations were faced with very different circumstances. Few people would have predicted that someone like me would one day become the President of the United States. (Applause.) Few people would have predicted that an American President would one day be permitted to speak to an audience like this in Prague. (Applause.) Few would have imagined that the Czech Republic would become a free nation, a member of NATO, a leader of a united Europe. Those ideas would have been dismissed as dreams.
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