OTHER COUNTRIES MUST ACT TO CORRECT THE DISASTER OF US-ISRAELI POLICY

The current American-Israeli Middle East policy has caused such enormous damage and such grave problems for both Israel and the West in general that other powers should feel more confident in criticising them and taking vigorous and concerted action, writes Kare Willoch, former Prime Minister and leader of the conservative party in Norway It is clearer than ever that peace in the broader Middle East is impossible without peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Efforts for peace cannot assume that the oppressed must first renounce all violence. History shows that oppressed peoples deprived of all hope for a life of dignity do not renounce violence. Attempts to pressure Lebanon to use force against Hezbollah would be counterproductive. The transition to a single Lebanese armed force will take time. Some may fear that Lebanon could be left defenceless if Hezbollah is disarmed faster than the Lebanese army is built up. And one can\'t expect complete confidence in the UN\'s ability to defend Lebanon after the discouraging experience with UNIFIL, which gave the country no real protection. And some may remember Bosnia, where the UN failed to prevent mass murders of Muslims, not unlike those that Ariel Sharon presided over in the Beirut of 1982.

REGIME CHANGE IN THE US

As the administration finds it harder to spin the tragic fiasco in Iraq, a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan, bungling over Hurricane Katrina, immigration policy, the nightmarish Homeland Security Administration, turf battles between the CIA and FBI, spiraling debt, and revelations of corruption, and now the Mark Foley scandal, Americans are also increasingly disenchanted with Democrats, who are often mired in the same Washington sleaze, writes Hazel Henderson, whose new book, \'\'Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy\'\' , covers reform of capitalism and unsustainable, fossilized industrialism. She created the TV series \'\'Ethical Markets\'\' and the Calvert-Henderson Quality of Life Indicators. In this analysis, Henderson writes that the two-party political duopoly makes a mockery of \'\'bi-partisan\'\' cooperation and hypocritical calls for national unity. Too many voters see only collusion between the powerful corporate and financial special interests and legislators with the burgeoning lobbying industry making the deals that leave out ordinary citizens. The rigidly-controlled two-party system, largely supported by contributions from similar corporations, makes third parties unviable unless led by billionaires. Both parties control the TV debates. Systemic reforms of the US political system are essential and go well beyond regime change:overhaul and standardise elections nationally, abolish the Electoral College, require all election supervisors and officials to be unaffiliated to political parties; require all voting machines be transparent to voters and provide paper ballot receipts, introducing universal health care.

UN SECRETARY-GENERAL UNBOUND

Given the pressures to which the UN is subjected, and the current threats to the very character and underlying values of the international system, the election of a new Secretary General is of great significance, writes Branislav Gosovic, author of books on UNCTAD and UNEP and numerous articles. He headed the South Centre Secretariat 1990-2005. In this article, Gosovic writes that unipolarity and \'\'pensee unique\'\' have put serious constraints on the SG and the Secretariat and reduced the policy space for their action. Furthermore, North-driven reforms supposedly intended to give greater discretionary authority to the SG risk facilitating unilateral political and administrative influence over the Secretariat. The South will need to protect the multilateral character of the UN Secretariat -- the only permanent multilateral structure with a universal, holistic task -- from efforts to reduce it to a merely administrative/management function and make it serve the interests of a few powerful actors. It will need to press for greatly strengthening the Secretariat and so provide the Secretary-General with institutional support inter alia to contribute to evolving democratic forms of multilateral statecraft and global governance.

THE BEAST AND THE BEAUTY

The decision of the organisers of Madrid fashion week to bar \'\'excessively\'\' thin models from the city\'s runways immediately reminded me of a grim joke in very poor taste about Ethiopian children who, seeing the photo of a very, very skinny top model, decided to organise a collection of food to send the destitute woman, writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, Cuban writer and novelist, winner of the Dashiell Hammett Prize for Best Literary Crime Novel. In this article, the author writes that the fashion world\'s habit of setting extreme thinness as the measure of female beauty (and personal success) appears to have reached worrying extremes: according to scientific authorities, the attainment of these emaciated physiques is related to psychic and eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia, which are becoming more and more widespread. If we do not respect that which was granted us by the miracle of evolution, an inhabitable planet and a body with intelligence, the future of the species and its common home could be condemned to premature death generated and engineered precisely by that great human virtue: intelligence. Or by its major defect: foolishness.

SUICIDE: THE NEW HARVEST OF GM COTTON

Evidence from the fields shows Monsanto\'s claims about its Bt cotton variety to be spurious, writes Anuradha Mittal, executive director of the Oakland Institute (www.oaklandinstitute.org), a policy thinktank dedicated to creating a space for public participation and democratic debate on key social, economic, environmental and foreign policy issues. In this article, Mittal cites a new study by Cornell University researchers, the first to look at longer-term economic impact of Bt cotton. The study of 481 Chinese farmers in five major cotton-producing provinces found that after seven years of cultivation they had to spray up to 20 times in a growing season to deal with secondary insects, which resulted in a net average income of 8 percent less than conventional cotton farmers. Failure of Bt cotton crops in India resulted in the suicides of an estimated 700 farmers in the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra, between June 1, 2005 and August 9, 2006, to escape debt incurred by buying the expensive GM seed. As Bt cotton continues to jostle for public acceptance, Bt crops have been attacked by \'\'Lalya\'\' or \'\'reddening\'\' as well, a disease unseen before which affected Bt more than the non-Bt cotton crop, resulting in 60 percent of farmers in Maharashtra failing to recover costs from their first GM harvest. Genetic engineering and Bt cotton will neither revolutionise the countryside in the developing countries nor improve food security, but a new farm economy based on the principle of food sovereignty and farmers\' rights as the centrepiece of the country\'s economic development model will.

CUBA: NOW WHAT?

The moment may have come for the moderate sectors of the Cuban exile community to convince the rest of them, and the US Congress, to suspend the trade embargo against Cuba and wisely bring about those conditions necessary for a transition, writes Joaquin Roy, the Jean Monnet Professor and Director of the Centre for the European Union at the University of Miami. In this article, Roy writes that it is not clear whether the Bush administration is capable of an intelligent response to the current situation or what movement the various exile groups might be able to generate. Washington might take advantage of an extension of Castro\'s absence beyond what is reasonable given the medical emergency to make Raul a spectacular offer: unconditionally lifting the embargo. Raul Castro would have to choose between two alternatives: reject all offers, or collaborate pragmatically. The advantage that Raul has at the moment is that he controls the armed forces and the state companies, which are managed by recycled military personnel. The question is whether this group actually has the energy and the means to fill the vacuum. At present, therefore, Washington\'s strategy is to place more trust in the \'\'known evil\'\' (the military) than in an as-yet unknown good, especially because it cannot be ruled out that Cuba will be swept by social upheaval and conflict as it begins to make the transition into a \'\'normal\'\' country.

THE LEAD LIFESAVER

Uruguay is becoming a world centre of cellulose production, writes Eduardo Galeano, Uruguayan writer and journalist and author of \'\'The Open Veins of Latin America\'\' and \'\'Memories of Fire\'\'. In this article, Galeano writes that it is a case of export monoculture in the purest colonial tradition: immense artificial plantations that call themselves forests and generate cellulose in an industrial process that floods the rivers with poisons and makes the air unbreathable. As usual, the blessings of nature become the curses of history. Our eucalyptus grows ten times faster than that of Finland, which means that the industrial plantations will be ten times as devastating. At the rate things are going, a large part of the country\'s land will be squeezed until the last drop of water is extracted. It is a tragic paradox: this was the only country in the world that submitted the ownership of water to a plebiscite. An overwhelming majority of Uruguayans decided in 2004 that water was public property. Is there no way to avoid this hijacking of the popular will?

MIDDLE EAST: SELF-DEFENSE OR WAR?

Bombs are falling again on innocent civilians in Lebanon, Gaza, and northern Israel. Why? It is necessary to go back in history to understand what is happening today, write Johan Galtung, a Professor of Peace Studies and Founder and Co-Director of TRANSCEND: A Peace and Development Network (www.transcend.org), and Dietrich Fischer, Director of the European University Centre for Peace Studies (www.epu.ac.at) and Co-Director of TRANSCEND. The problem is the vicious cycle of repeated mutual retaliation characteristic of wars, and underlying it the unresolved conflict between Jews and Arabs. This problem cannot be solved by de-escalation in the choice of targets and level of destruction. A ceasefire is urgent to end the immediate suffering, but it will remain only temporary as long as the underlying conflict is not solved. Israel should consider how to make peace rather than war. One way out might be a Middle East Community modeled after the European Community of 1958, with Palestine fully recognised. It would be in Israel\'s and its Arab neighbor\'s interest to learn from that success story. People of good will should come together in the midst of the present crisis to elaborate what a peaceful Middle East could look like.

HOW MUCH LONGER?

One country bombed two countries. Such impunity might astound were it not business as usual. In the few timid protests made, it was stated that mistakes were made. How much longer will horrors be called mistakes?, asks Eduardo Galeano, Uruguayan writer and journalist and author of The Open Veins of Latin America and Memories of Fire. In this article, Galeano writes that this slaughter of civilians began with the kidnapping of a soldier. How much longer will the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier be allowed to justify the kidnapping of Palestinian sovereignty? How much longer will the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers be allowed to justify the kidnapping of the entire nation of Lebanon? For centuries the slaughter of Jews was the favourite sport of Europeans. Auschwitz was the natural culmination of an ancient river of terror which had flowed across all of Europe. How much longer will Palestinians and other Arabs be made to pay for crimes they didn`t commit? Those who dare denounce this murder are called anti-semites. How much longer will the critics of state terrorism be considered anti-semites? How much longer will we accept this grotesque form of extortion? Are the Jews who are horrified by what is being done in their name anti-semites? Are Arabs, as Semitic as the Jews, anti-semites? Are there not Arab voices that defend a Palestinian homeland but condemn fundamentalist insanity? Isn`t it clear that in the war between Israel and Hezbolla it is the civilians, Lebanese, Palestinian, and Israeli, that are dying? And isn´t it clear that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the invasion of Gaza and Lebanon are the incubators of hatred, producing fanatic after fanatic after fanatic? We are the only species of animal that specialises in mutual extermination. We devote 2.5 billion dollars per day to military spending. Misery and war are children of the same father. How much longer will we accept that this world so in love with death is the only world possible?

THE WORLD CUP OF ZIDANE

Someone, I don\'t know who, summed up the 2006 World Cup as follows: -The players behaved in an exemplary fashion. They didn\'t drink, they didn\'t smoke, they didn\'t play, writes Eduardo Galeano, Uruguayan writer and journalist and author of The Open Veins of Latin America and Memories of Fire. Those who from time to time made a goal did not play beautiful football, and those who did, didn\'t score. Africa was edged out early on, and before long Latin America was exiled as well. The World Cup became a Eurocup. The results rewarded what is now called practical sense: high defensive walls and way up front a lone scorer, imploring God for a favour. As is usually the case in football and life, he who plays best loses while he who plays not to lose wins. The finale of penalty shots only added to the injustice. Until 1968, difficult games were decided with the flip of a coin. In a way, this is still true. The penalty shots seemed too much a matter of sheer chance. Argentina was better than Germany, and France was better than Italy, but a few seconds mattered more than two hours of play, and Argentina had to go home and France lost the Cup. ..... There was little imagination on display. The artists left the playing to weight lifters and Olympic runners, who in passing would kick a ball or a rival.

THE THREAT FROM GLOBAL TRADE IMBALANCES

Despite the relatively favourable evolution of the terms of trade of many developing countries, complacency must be avoided, writes Supachai Panitchpakdi, Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). In this article, the author argues that one of the most important challenges for national policy makers and for the international community is to ensure a fair distribution of the revenue arising from primary production and its proper use in financing development. Strengthened macroeconomic policy coordination is also necessary to improve the coherence between the international trading and financial systems. There is a striking asymmetry in existing multilateral arrangements between trade on the one hand, and monetary and financial relations on the other. A global monetary authority like the IMF could play an important role in strengthening the international institutional framework in the monetary and financial area. It would have to focus on international monetary and financial stability. In principle, surveillance could play a significant part in promoting a more stable and reliable system of exchange rates to ensure a predictable trading environment. But in order to fulfil that role, surveillance would need to become more effective and also symmetrical across all countries

WASHINGTON NEO CONS PUSH WORLD WAR III AS ELECTION STRATEGY

In the current US political climate with majorities in both Houses of Congress passing resolutions of support for Israel in its new war on Hezbollah, dissenting voices are heard mainly on alternative independent media and the blogosphere, writes Hazel Henderson, author of the forthcoming Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy and other books. In this article, Henderson writes of independent journalist Bill Berkowitz\'s timely alert in Other News, July 20, 2006 about the Republican strategy to market more fear by escalating their war-on-terror rhetoric to panic about the advent of World War III, setting up Syria and Iran as the next US targets. As the coming mid-term elections in November look likely to unseat Republican majorities in Congress, such useful domestic reforms as alternative energy or Newt Gingrich`s ideas on health care are proving too tame to fire up the Republican base. Thus, the switch to escalating the \"war on terror\" on \"axis of evil\" countries and \"Islamic extremists\" and the new media-friendly, propaganda-perfect soundbite \"World War III\". No doubt already tested in focus groups, this new slogan is perfect for bumper stickers, campaign buttons, tee shirts, stickers, 15-second TV and radio spots as well as talk show soundbites. Let`s remember President Dwight Eisenhower`s cautions about the US military-industrial complex and President Franklin D. Roosevelt who reminded us that we have nothing to fear but fear itself.

TREND TO ABOLISH CAPITAL PUNISHMENT CONTINUES

The annual report on capital punishment issued on July 21 by the abolitionist organisation Hands Off Cain shows that the movement towards the abolition of the death penalty, underway for at least ten years, is continuing, writes Elisabetta Zamparutti, a lawyer and the coordinator of the annual report on the death penalty worldwide by Hands Off Cain. It is essential that we act immediately to make sure that a moratorium on the death penalty is presented and approved by the UN General Assembly in September. In this way we can fulfil the initiative begun 13 years ago by Hands Off Cain and by the Transnational Radical Party, which enjoys the support of an extraordinary convergence of the majority and the opposition in the Italian Parliament. With the help of the UN moratorium --and in anticipation of a complete worldwide abolition -- the thousands of those condemned to death could be saved: not only those already known to all, in American prisons, but also the unnamed and the forgotten who await their sentences in the prisons of China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Cuba, and all other authoritarian regimes who go to their deaths in silence with total indifference on the part of the world.

NAFTA: A CONTINENTAL TRAGEDY

On June 6, 2006, the Canadian members of parliament from the New Democratic Party and the Bloc Quebecois met with their American and Mexican counterparts to declare that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was a \'\'continental tragedy\'\', writes Anuradha Mittal, the founder and director of the Oakland Institute. In this article, Mittal writes that the ongoing debate on the fate of some 11 million undocumented immigrants in the US continues to ignore the structural issues that have forced millions to leave their homes. Free-trade agreements like NAFTA promised to bring more jobs, trade surpluses, and an increased standard of living to member countries, but the reality is altogether different. Far from providing a \'\'level playing field\'\', NAFTA has been a death warrant for small farmers, placing small Mexican farmers at a sharp disadvantage with respect to the US. No fence will be able to take the pressure off of the US border. The country must therefore address a number of simple questions: should the undocumented immigrants be criminalised and our borders walled off, or should we get rid of or renegotiate free-trade agreements? Should we blame the victims of free trade-agreements, or should we ensure that as long as capital and goods can move freely across borders, so can the hungry, the destitute, and the dispossessed?

MIDDLE EAST: SELF-DEFENSE OR WAR?

Bombs are falling again on innocent civilians in Lebanon, Gaza, and northern Israel. Why? It is necessary to go back in history to understand what is happening today, write Johan Galtung, a Professor of Peace Studies and Founder and Co-Director of TRANSCEND: A Peace and Development Network (www.transcend.org), and Dietrich Fischer, Director of the European University Centre for Peace Studies (www.epu.ac.at) and Co-Director of TRANSCEND. The problem is the vicious cycle of repeated mutual retaliation characteristic of wars, and underlying it the unresolved conflict between Jews and Arabs. This problem cannot be solved by de-escalation in the choice of targets and level of destruction. A ceasefire is urgent to end the immediate suffering, but it will remain only temporary as long as the underlying conflict is not solved. Israel should consider how to make peace rather than war. One way out might be a Middle East Community modeled after the European Community of 1958, with Palestine fully recognised. It would be in Israel\'s and its Arab neighbor\'s interest to learn from that success story. People of good will should come together in the midst of the present crisis to elaborate what a peaceful Middle East could look like.

THE WORLD NEEDS A MORE DEMOCRATIC UNITED NATIONS

In its present form the United Nations is ill-equipped to advance humanity\'s best interests, writes Kumi Naidoo, Secretary-General of Civicus: World Alliance For Citizen Participation. In this article the author writes that the democratisation of the UN cannot be limited to the current efforts at reform. Calls by the Secretary General for full, systemic, and meaningful civil society participation must be urgently implemented in order to make the UN system more transparent, accountable, and democratic. What is most urgently needed is a changed consciousness at the international level. This is an essential prerequisite for the UN to achieve a profound democratic transformation that will allow humanity to deal effectively with the new challenges of the 21st century. Civil society traditionally has helped bring about great societal changes. It shall continue to do so in the years ahead.

WORLD SOCIAL FORUM: THE CRADLE OF GLOBAL CIVIL SOCIETY

What can we expect from the future of the World Social Forum? asks Roberto Savio, president emeritus of IPS and member of the International Council of the World Social Forum. In this analysis, Savio writes that the refusal of the participants to allow themselves to be absorbed by political parties and to establish relations with political institutions has reduced the WSF to a circuit of self-referentiality. Is it possible to increase the WSF\'s capacity for action? Savio thinks not: it has not been possible to move past the idea of an \'\'open space\'\', which allows for the exchange of ideas and the creation of alliances but prevents the formulation of proposals for concrete action by the forum. It is thought that such options should be carried out by the organisations participating in the WSF during their normal operations. There is a minority that holds that the WSF should not limit itself to being a kind of spiritual exercise from which participants emerge stronger and better. They believe that the forum should decide on a series of actions that provide an alternative to neoliberal globalisation and should pressure institutions to adopt them. But for now this debate is going nowhere. In all likelihood the WSF will not make significant progress into the political realm and will remain a major exceptional occasion for civil society to meet.

WORLD SOCIAL FORUM: THE CRADLE OF GLOBAL CIVIL SOCIETY

What can we expect from the future of the World Social Forum? asks Roberto Savio, president emeritus of IPS and member of the International Council of the World Social Forum. In this analysis, Savio writes that the refusal of the participants to allow themselves to be absorbed by political parties and to establish relations with political institutions has reduced the WSF to a circuit of self-referentiality. Is it possible to increase the WSF\'s capacity for action? Savio thinks not: it has not been possible to move past the idea of an \'\'open space\'\', which allows for the exchange of ideas and the creation of alliances but prevents the formulation of proposals for concrete action by the forum. It is thought that such options should be carried out by the organisations participating in the WSF during their normal operations. There is a minority that holds that the WSF should not limit itself to being a kind of spiritual exercise from which participants emerge stronger and better. They believe that the forum should decide on a series of actions that provide an alternative to neoliberal globalisation and should pressure institutions to adopt them. But for now this debate is going nowhere. In all likelihood the WSF will not make significant progress into the political realm and will remain a major exceptional occasion for civil society to meet.

AN ASIAN CANDIDATE FOR UN SECRETARY-GENERAL

India\'s choice for UN Secretary-General of senior most Indian in the UN secretariat and renowned thinker and writer Shashi Tharoor, passing over many senior politicians, is testimony to its traditional approach to the organisation, writes T.P. Sreenivasan, former ambassador of India to the United Nations (Vienna) and former governor for India at the International Atomic Energy Agency. In this article, the author writes that India has not sought to use the UN as an instrument of its policy nor sought sinecures in it for its politicians. The next Secretary-General has to be a good manager and a strong reformer. For the US, this will be the real issue. Of all the candidates, only Tharoor has worked at various levels in the UN and knows the organisation inside out. He has proven managerial skills and has a vision for reform, which he has already written on. Indeed, he would do well to present a blueprint for change even before his election. None of the other candidates would be able to do so convincingly.

CENTRAL AMERICA BENEFITS FROM SHAKE-UPS TO THE SOUTH

A few months ago no one was betting on the progress of Central American integration, much less the region\'s hopes for a free-trade agreement with the EU, writes Joaquin Roy, Jean Monnet Professor and Director of the Centre for the European Union at the University of Miami. However, Roy writes in this article, the one-two punch administered by Venezuela\'s surprising decision to enter MERCOSUR and pull out of the Andean Community, and by the bout of nationalisation in Bolivia, set off alarms in Europe. The Andean Community, with which Brussels hoped to work out a moderate agreement, is now definitively out of commission, while the viability of MERCOSUR is in doubt. Consequently, Brussels is now setting its sights on Central America, willing, it would seem, to temporarily overlook its shortcomings. In this new opportunity for integration opened by the possibility of a Central American Free-Trade Agreement (CAFTA), or mini-FTAAs with the US, those problems presented by crucial elements that still lack a common free-trade zone must be resolved. While 94 percent of products are already covered, 53 percent of that remaining six percent are agricultural products. Despite the fact that there are agreements for the exchange of services and transport, there are also major asymmetries and not all countries apply them.

RESOURCE WARS: THE HEAVY ECOLOGICAL AND POLITICAL FOOTPRINT OF ECONOMIC GLOBALISATION

Oil wars, water wars, land wars, atmospheric wars : this is the real face of economic globalisation, whose appetite for resources is exceeding the limits of sustainability and justice, writes Vandana Shiva, an author and international campaigner for women and the environment. Like oil, water is becoming a source of wars as it is commodified and privatised, dammed and transferred long distances. Every river in India has become a site of major, irresolvable conflicts over water ownership and distribution. The waters of the Tigris and Euphrates, which have sustained agriculture for thousands of years in Turkey, Syria, and Iraq, have been the cause of several major clashes among the three countries. Trade liberalisation is allowing corporations to encroach on the ecological space of local communities, thus unleashing conflicts. The problem is not a shortage of natural resources but free trade and globalisation, corporate greed and partnerships between corporations and states to usurp people\'s resources and violate their fundamental rights. If globalisation is pushed relentlessly, these resource wars will grow and globalisation will be slowed to a halt by ecological catastrophes and conflicts over resources -- or, the movements for ecological sustainability and social justice will succeed in resisting globalisation\'s ecological overreaching by laying the foundations for an Earth Democracy in which we live lightly on the earth, and share her vital resources equitably.