The annual report, called Global Information Society Watch (GISWatch), was released on November 16th by the Association for Progressive Communications and Dutch-funder Hivos. GISWatch 2009 is entitled “Access to online information and knowledge – advancing human rights and democracy”.
It shows (…)
Financial wizards, economists, business persons and social activists around the globe have been challenging the free market orthodoxy. They seek to recover the virtues of bazaars from the tyranny of a market model that emerged about two centuries ago. This book is a chronicle of their (…)
A Human Rights Watch report emphasises the need for a system of recording and investigating all maternal deaths.
THE maternal mortality ratio (MMR) is calculated by the number of maternal deaths for every 100,000 births. Consider this: In 2005, India’s MMR was 16 times that of Russia, 10 times (…)
Bt brinjal is a step away from becoming India’s first genetically modified food crop. Whether it will enter our kitchens, now depends on the Union environment ministry.
On October 14, the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (geac, the clearing house for all genetically modified crops in (…)
It is clear that any effective international ’deal’ on climate change must decrease emissions from deforestation and land-use change that represent about a fifth of all emissions. An international mechanism to fund such reductions, reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (…)
35 years ago, workers at the Lucas Aerospace company formulated an ‘alternative corporate plan’ to convert military production to socially useful and environmentally desirable purposes. What are the lessons for greening the world economy today? Read more
Secrecy is a central feature of the global financial system. Jurisdictions compete with each other to provide it, in order to attract financial flows – with appalling effects elsewhere. It is essential to identify the worst culprits in providing this secrecy. But nobody has ever tried to do this (…)
The government has announced Operation Green Hunt, a war purportedly against the "Maoist" rebels headquartered in the jungles of central India. Of course, the Maoists are by no means the only ones rebelling. There is a whole spectrum of struggles all over the country that people are engaged (…)
This book takes another look at the costs of adapting to climate change. The estimates for 2030 used by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change are likely to be substantial under-estimates. Professor Martin Parry and his co-authors look at the estimates from a range of perspectives, and (…)
‘Belching out the devil’ chronicles a series of journeys to various parts of the world to meet those who have experienced ‘the Coke side of life’ that the adverts don’t tell us about. There are Indian farmers with empty wells, Colombian trade unionists with collections of death threats, hassled (…)
The hike in global food prices has pushed hundreds of millions more people into poverty, and sparked riots and protests in the Middle East, Africa and the Americas. Walden Bello, the leading writer and activist on the global South, provides a penetrating analysis of the various causes: not just (…)
The Chinese government should immediately account for all detainees in its custody and allow independent investigations into the July 2009 protests in Urumqi and their aftermath, Human Rights Watch said in a new report on enforced "disappearances" released today.
The 44-page report, "‘We Are (…)
Since the Revolution in 1979, Iranians have coped with an increasingly repressive regime. Attempts for greater social and political freedoms have resulted in brutal crackdowns by the hardline government. The ensuing apathy and significant boycott of the 2005 presidential elections led to the (…)
The killing of at least 160 participants in a peaceful demonstration, the rape of many women protestors, and the arrest of political leaders by security forces in Conakry on 28 September 2009 showed starkly the dangers that continued military rule poses to Guinea’s stability and to a region (…)
A massive rally in Chicago next week aims to express public displeasure with the massive bank bailout outside the American Bank Association annual meeting. Protesters will converge at 11:30 on Monday, October 26, at 301 North Water Street, where the meeting is taking place.
"The same financial (…)
Since 2000, armed with strong political good will, Senegal is implementing a development policy that lays much emphasis on ICT’s. Part of this strategy is the modernization of public services by using ICT to establish an adequate institutional framework, equipping government offices with (…)
Global initiatives have in recent years stressed the contribution that arts and culture can make to development. This has led African and European artists, bureaucrats and policy makers to increasingly confront the unequal relations in North-South cultural and artistic exchanges. Read more
The HIV/AIDS epidemic is one of the greatest challenges facing post-democracy South Africa. In 2007, the country, which is home to less than one per cent of the world’s population, carried 17 per cent of the global burden of HIV infection — and the virus continues to spread relentlessly.
The (…)
Immigrant high school and university students in the United States have used the internet effectively in building activist networks to support the passing of a law called the DREAM act.
«I have been living in the U.S. for most of my life and now that i have graduated high school i can’t (…)
There is at most a weak link between population growth and rising emissions of the greenhouse gases that cause climate change, says a study published today (28 September) in the journal Environment and Urbanization.
The paper contradicts growing calls for population growth to be limited as (…)