By Martin Khor Penang, Malaysia, Jan 2 2018 (IPS) – Another new year has dawned, and on a world facing serious disruption on many fronts. What are the trends and issues to watch out for in 2018?
Category: Columns
Trump’s security strategy is one of thuggery and intimidation
By Dr Elias Akleh During his national security speech last Monday, December 18th Trump introduced his administration’s new “America First” national security strategy in a surprisingly unaccustomed calm and calculated mannerism that is uncharacteristic of him. Although it seemed that…
Corporal punishment doesn’t work: Time for change
“We are saying that (corporal punishment) is a horrible thing that does not work” – Professor of Psychology Alan Kazdin, Ph.D., Child Psychiatry at Yale University Sir Frank Peters Seemingly, it’s hard for some school ‘teachers’ to imagine or appreciate…
The Jerusalem vote and the US-Israel link
By Chandra Muzaffar One hopes that the overwhelming rejection of the Trump Administration’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel by the UN General Assembly (UNGA) on the 21st of December 2017 will compel Washington DC to rescind its…
The Vietnam War is not history for victims of Agent Orange
By Marjorie Cohn and Jonathan Moore Watching the Ken Burns-Lynn Novick 18-hour series, “The Vietnam War,” is an emotional experience. Whether you served in the US military during the war or marched in the streets to end it, you cannot…
Trade unions on frontline battle against inequality
Esther Lynch The European Commission continues to talk about robust recovery, but with wages falling or stagnating, many people in Europe are worse off than they were a decade ago. The European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working…
A year in review by Food Tank: 2017 food and agriculture news
Danielle Nierenberg We have collected some of the agriculture and food news highlights from 2017 to share with you. As 2017 comes to a close, Food Tank has collected news highlights from the food and agriculture world to share with…
The meaty side of climate change
Shefali Sharma “Carbon majors,” like big oil and gas companies, have long been the focus of efforts to curb climate change and stem rising temperatures. And yet, while energy giants like Exxon and Shell have drawn fire for their roles…
What’s happening in Catalonia and Spain
On October 1, 2017, the police of the Spanish State (known as the National Police) endeavored to take the polling boxes where Catalan people were voting in a referendum with two choices: for or against Catalonian independence from the Spanish…
The myth of a fossil fuel phase-out
Samuel Furfari Brussels – How the world uses energy is a hot topic for a warming planet, and fears of pollution and resource strain have produced a virtual arms race of energy-efficiency strategies. From the European Union to China, economies…
Money talks at One Planet Summit in Paris
By Paris Correspondent Paris, Dec 14 (IPS) – As funding to combat climate change has lagged behind lofty words, the One Planet Summit in France this week invited governments and business leaders to put money on the table.
Victory Day from a foreign perspective
When the names of freedom fighters are long forgotten, their memory will live eternally in the Bangladesh soil that their blood helped fertilize Sir Frank Peters Today, December 16, is Victory Day… as if you didn’t know and wondered what…
Sovereignty in Europe: Integrationists and statists
by John Lloyd In most conversations and interviews on what’s broadly called populism, “Trump” and “Brexit” are bracketed. These events in the two largest Anglophone countries are taken, without the need for further discussion, to signal a turn to the…
25 children’s books growing young minds
Danielle Nierenberg Wondering how to teach kids to eat better, especially during the holidays? Books can be a great way to tell the stories of food, farmers, and food and agriculture workers across the globe.
A responsibility to prevent genocide
By Tharanga Yakupitiyage UN, Dec 12 (IPS) – Almost 70 years since the Genocide Convention was adopted, the international community still faces a continued and growing risk of genocide.
EU must do more for its young NEETs
Poverty was earlier a key (but not exclusive) issue for the international community, largely developing countries (see here) but since then the 2008 crisis has drastically affected the standard of living in the EU and raised poverty’s profile in the…
Security Council reform – Should foxes rule chicken coop
By James A. Paul New York, Dec 8 (IPS) – Since the end of the Cold War, the UN Security Council has dramatically increased its activity and authority. Though the Council has exercised unprecedented global power, it has remained a…
From an open Internet, back to the Dark Ages
By Jonathan Cook Nazareth: Can anyone still doubt that access to a relatively free and open internet is rapidly coming to an end in the west? In China and other autocratic regimes, leaders have simply bent the internet to their…
The Climate-Change fight returns to Paris
Laurence Tubiana In 2015, the so-called “high ambition coalition” of developed and developing countries pushed the Paris climate agreement past the finish line. But when global leaders reconvene in Paris for new talks on climate change at the upcoming One…
Europe – a world-class place to live and work?
A world-class place to live and work.’ That is how President Juncker described Europe at the summit to formally proclaim the EU Pillar of Social Rights in Gothenburg last month. And he added: ‘Europe is more than just a single…
Inequality more than matters
by Javier López Inequality is the biggest challenge of our time. It undermines social confidence and reduces support for democratic institutions. It lurks behind the new toxic relationship that western societies have established with their future and explains much of…
From global poverty to exclusion and despair
By Prof Michel Chossudovsky “The Sociology of Justice”, which is the timely theme of The Philippine Sociological Society’s 2017 National conference at UP Cebu must be understood in relation to an unfolding New World Order which destroys sovereign countries through…
Violence against women: Why the UN Scy-Gen got it wrong
Robert J. Burrowes In his remarks on the recent International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women – see ‘Violence Against Women is Fundamentally About Power’ http://www.ipsnews.net/2017/11/violence-women-fundamentally-power/ – United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres inadvertently demonstrated why well-meaning efforts being…
Honoring soil scientists on World Soil Day
13 soil scientists to watch Danielle Nierenberg Soil performs a variety of vital functions, including supporting plant and animal life and filtering contaminants from water and the air. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) asserts that “soils need to…
South-south cooperation key to a new multilateralism
By Baher Kamal Rome, Dec (IPS) – “There are new challenges to all states: among them, the real threat to multilateralism… South-South and triangular cooperation can contribute to a new multilateralism and drive the revitalisation of the global partnership for…
When medicines don’t work anymore
By Martin Khor The crisis of antibiotic resistance has gotten worse, and a global action plan must be launched urgently, most appropriately at the World Health Assembly in May. PENANG, Malaysia, Dec 4 (IPS) – The growing crisis of antibiotic…
Beyond Bonn: Eco-social policies and environmental sustainability
COP23 in Bonn sought to maintain the global momentum for ‘green growth’ – to decouple output from greenhouse gas emissions. But the crucial topics of consumption, inequality and unrestrained growth were entirely absent. My recent book seeks to place these…
The real reasons Trump is quitting UNESCO
By Jonathan Cook Nazareth: At first glance, the decision last week by the Trump administration, followed immediately by Israel, to quit the United Nation’s cultural agency seems strange. Why penalise a body that promotes clean water, literacy, heritage preservation and…
“What price do we put on our oceans?”
By Manipadma Jena Nairobi/New Delhi, Dec 1 (IPS) – “Political resolve is the key for succeeding in our fight against oceans pollution,” Erik Solheim, head of UN Environment, who is leading hands-on the organisation’s global campaign to clean up seas…
Climate finance: Waiting for the first EU $ from committed 100b
Listening to Europe speak in Bonn, Germany during the recent conference on how to implement the Paris Agreement on climate change, it is possible to be get carried away thinking, nay believing, that the global response is well underway. But…