GLOBAL RECESSION ACCELERATES MOVEMENT TO SLOW DOWN

"Speed Kills: Slow Down and Live". So say American road signs urging drivers to lighten their foot on the gas pedal. But little else has slowed down in the U.S. or elsewhere in the 36 years since traffic planners instituted a 55 mile-per-hour national highway speed limit (and later, in haste, repealed it). In a global culture dominated by the impatience of youth, counted in nanoseconds and fueled by just-in-time supply chains, everything needs to be done yesterday since today is no longer soon enough.

TRADE GOES HAND IN HAND WITH HUMAN RIGHTS.

The history of the relationship between trade and human rights is a history of suspicion, and to some extent of deliberate reciprocal ignorance. Yet, trade goes hand in hand with human rights. Trade presupposes human interaction, respect and understanding. If conducted with respect, "trade polishes and softens the most barbarous mores", to quote Montesquieu and his theory of "sweet trade".

CLIMATE CHANGE: ONE STEP FORWARD AND ONE STEP BACK

The good news about the Copenhagen Summit on Climate Change (December 7-18) is that it produced universal agreement on the importance of early action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to manageable levels. It also made progress on some of the key elements to be included in such an agreement and on continuing the ongoing process of negotiation. The bad news is that it revealed deep and unresolved differences between the positions of the main parties, notably between the more developed and the less developed countries.

LEARNING FROM HAITI

As "natural" as it may seem, no catastrophe is natural. An earthquake of the same intensity has more victims in a poor country than in a rich industrialised one. For example, the earthquake in Haiti, 7.0 on the Richter scale, caused more than 200,000 deaths, while the one six months ago that struck Honshu, Japan, caused only one death and one injury though it was of the same strength (7.1).

WORLD AT A CROSSROADS

As the new Executive Director of Greenpeace International I am often asked what changes I plan to make for the organisation. The response I give is one which I believe applies to Civil Society as a whole: I would like us to become even more inclusive in our membership, even more united with other groups in our work, even more determined in talking truth to power, and even more active all around the globe.

UNIFIED APPROACH NEEDED FOR NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT

The only viable normative approach regarding nuclear weapons is their total and universal elimination under strict verification. This cannot be achieved by incremental steps but only by the negotiation of a Nuclear Weapons Convention as advocated by the UN Secretary-General.

FOR SALINGER, WITH LOVE AND SQUALOR

At times it seemed like he was long dead, and the news that he had died on January 28, just past his 91st birthday, does not dispel the strange sensation of being but not living (or living and not being) that this man generated. Because for almost half a century J.D.Salinger may have been dead the way writers usually die: they stop writing. And yet no one can deny that thanks to what he had written, this death was impossible, because Salinger was, is, and will always be terribly (to use one of his favourite adverbs) immortal.

U.S. CONGRESS: THE BEST MONEY CAN BUY

The radical decision of the US Supreme Court on January 21, 2010, allows companies to spend unlimited money in politics. Overturning 100 years of restraint on corporate spending, the two newest justices, John Roberts and Samuel Alito, appointed by former President George W. Bush, have turned the court into an ally of big corporations. The fanciful view of this highest US Court holds that money is equivalent to free speech under the First Amendment and that corporations are "persons" equivalent to real human beings. The unreality of this view also equates corporations with trade unions without recognizing that unions represent real people whereas corporations are legal entities for the purpose of making money for their shareholders.

INDIGENOUS PEOPLES AND THE DIFFICULT ART OF SURVIVAL

In-mid January, the United Nations issued its first World Report on the condition of the indigenous peoples, which have made progress and won recognition internationally but not at the national and local level, where their demands remain unmet.

INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES NEW TOOL AGAINST POVERTY

In many respects, the diffusion of information and communication technologies (ICTs) continues to be a great development success story. Over the past four years we have witnessed dramatic growth in the use of various ICT applications, notably mobile phones. Developing-country populations now account for more than half of all Internet users. Improved connectivity has also enabled more firms to gain access to critical information, finance and knowledge -all key factors for enhancing competitiveness.

BEYOND THE WORLD SOCIAL FORUM

The secret of the vitality of the World Social Forum (WSF) lies in the fact that it is organised as an open space which, without renouncing its original mission of challenging neoliberalism, proposes to recharge the batteries of citizen activism, which is now necessary on a planetary scale if the earth is to move beyond the current mode of extreme capitalism. This process is underway and is following its own course, led by organisations and social movements and networks around the world.

LEARNING TO BE HUMAN

The smiling faces and laughing voices of children are the true measure of a peaceful and healthy society, much more so than any statistical indices.

THREE REQUESTS FOR PRESIDENT OBAMA

I have been a sincere admirer of yours since I started following your writing and speaking about your plans during the presidential campaign. I admire your humanism, your culture, your valour, and your style. Unlike you, I am not a believer. I am agnostic and have a certain amount of experience in public life. However, I said to many friends that your victory constituted an authentic miracle for the United States and for the world, however little I believe in miracles.

THE WORLD MUST BUILD A CULTURE OF PEACE

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, in December 1998, a group of civil society organisations launched a global campaign for the universal recognition of the human right to peace. They called upon all "to prevent violence, intolerance, and injustice in our countries and societies in order to overcome the cult of war and to build a Culture of Peace".

DOES HAITI EXIST?

Haiti was the first independent country of Latin America. In the last years of the 18th century the French colony of Santo Domingo, which occupied the western half of the island of Hispaniola saw the coffee and sugar cane plantations that had produced such immense wealth for Europe set ablaze. The fires were started by black slaves, whether brought over from Africa or born in the colony, who had the audacity to think that the enlightenment dream that liberty, equality, and fraternity were possible for all men applied to them as well, the most exploited and unequal, though men nonetheless.

AVATARS OF HISTORICAL TRUTH

A few weeks ago I had an opportunity to see Katyn, the latest film of the great Polish director Andrej Wajda. Since then I have been haunted by the final scenes in which we "see" what we already know: the execution of 20,000 officers of the Polish Army by the soldiers of the occupying Soviet Army which, in mid-1939, in keeping with a provision of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, invaded eastern Poland.

YEAR ENDER – NOT YET OUT OF THE WOODS

In February of this year, the global economic downturn was peaking. The collapse of industrial output and exports was approaching a 40 percent year-on-year on average. Trade was shrinking dramatically. The outlook was indeed gloomy.

AS LONG AS THERE IS HUNGER THERE WILL BE NO SUSTAINABLE FUTURE

When we place an undernourished child on the scale, we are weighing not only a weakened organism, but also the synthesis of a system of reasoning as cruel as the one that cuts down trees, blows destruction and excludes the possibility of a decent life to over one billion people worldwide. The conscience of the XXI Century can no longer neglect that, as long as there is hunger, there will be no sustainable future

GLOBAL WARMING IGNITES BORDERS AS WELL

Little by little, it is being confirmed that the melting of the polar ice caps, whether in Antarctica or the Arctic, is happening significantly faster than initially predicted. The consequences of this for peace, one of the main victims of climate change, are enormous.

LATIN AMERICA STEERS A NEW COURSE

Latin America is undergoing a process of accelerated transformation. Considered the "backyard of the United States" for much of the last century, it suffered a string of coups d'etat and dictatorships, many piloted by neoliberal economists from the so-called "Chicago School". It is natural that the region would want to forget this past and move in another direction.

HAS THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE BECOME A WAR PRIZE?

In George Orwell's 1984, Big Brother issues the infamous slogan, "War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength." Is that where we have now arrived?