Servicio de Columnistas de IPS
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: CRISIS OF THE CIVIC NATION?
, 2020-05-10 (IPS) - For US historian Samuel Huntington the greatest threat to the national cohesion and identity of the US is Hispanic immigration. For Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, demands for autonomy for the Bolivian region of Santa Cruz presents a danger that must be promptly nipped in the bud. For some, the greatest threat to the cohesion of the Spanish government is the possible approval of a proposal for a new Basque state, writes Joaquin Roy, Jean Monnet professor and Director of the Centre of the University of Miami. What these three cases have in common, Roy writes in this article, is the failure of, or the perception of disappointment with, the civic nation, and irritation at persistent intransigency, the marginalisation of the different, and irresponsible centralism. In any case, they are the product of a globalisation that pressures each to conserve his particular signs of identity, whether beneath the various configurations of the nation-state or the more varied experiments in international integration and cooperation. The United States may have reached the exhaustion of its model and doubts about its cohesion, and as a result is trying to invent for itself an identity-based nation (based on a race and an ethnicity, when not on a denomination of Christianity as well) that never existed. In Latin America the failure of the civic model is more scandalous because it is easier to adopt but is more expensive. -
: PRICELESS VALUES
Montevideo, 2020-03-06 (IPS) - Eduardo Galeano has written these lines in support of the global demonstration against war in Iraq, to be held February 15. We offer them without cost to our subscribers. NO! By Eduardo Galeano MONTEVIDEO. The president of the planet has announced his next crime, in the name of God and democracy. He is thus slandering God.And slandering democracy as well, which has barely survived with the dictators that the United States has sown throughout the world for more than a century. The Bush administration, less a government really than an oil pipeline, needs to take over the world's second largest petroleum reserve, which lies beneath Iraq. It needs to show off the latest models from the arms industry out on the battlefield. And it has to justify the resulting gigantic increase in military spending. This is what it's about. Everything else is pretext. And the pretexts for this next bloodbath are an insult to intelligence. The only country that has used nuclear weapons against a civilian population, the country that annihilated Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atomic bombs, is now trying to convince the world that Iraq is a danger to humanity. If President Bush loves humanity so much and really wants to take on the greatest threat to humanity, why doesn't he bomb his own country rather than plan another campaign of extermination for innocent peoples. Giant demonstrations will sweep the streets of the world on February 15. Humanity is tired of being used as an alibi for assassins. And tired of mourning its dead at the end of every war. This time is wants to stop the war that would shortly kill them. -
: BETWEEN VENEZUELA AND NOWHERELAND
CARACAS, 2005-01-08 (IPS) - A strange dictator this Hugo Chavez -- both suicidal and masochistic. He created a constitution that allows the people to throw him out and then risked this very outcome in the first recall referendum in the history of Venezuela, writes Eduardo Galeano, Uruguayan writer and novelist and author of ''The Open Veins of Latin America'' and ''Memories of Fire'' He was not punished, Galeano writes in this article. Indeed, it was the eighth election Chavez had won in five years. Obedient to his own constitution, Chavez accepted the referendum, which was called for by the opposition, and placed his fate in the hands of the people: ''You decide.'' Until now, presidents interrupted their terms of office only in the event of death, a putsch, an uprising, or a parliamentary decision. The referendum introduced a novel form of direct democracy. It was an extraordinary event: How many presidents, anywhere in the world, would dream of doing what Chavez did? And how many would continue to be president after doing so? -
: WHAT THE UN CAN DO TO FIGHT TERRORISM
NEW YORK, 2005-01-01 (IPS) - UN Resolution 1373 required UN member states to pass laws banning every type of terrorist action and to ratify various international treaties: the question is whether governments will enforce them, writes Inocencio F. Arias, Spanish Ambassador to the UN Security Council and president of the UN Committee Against Terrorism. In this article for IPS, Arias argues that the Committee against Terrorism created by 1373 must have the means to verify enforcement and denounce cases of voluntary failure to the Council and the international community. Globalisation, technological progress, and the proliferation of suicide strategies has made terrorism potentially devastating. The possibility of terrorists gaining access to weapons of mass destruction, nuclear, chemical, or biological, is neither science fiction nor a movie plot. Sooner or later, science fiction will become reality. The UN must use the instruments available to it to minimise this possibility. The efficiency of the organisation's efforts in this area will reduce the unilateralist temptations of the powerful to impose their own solutions and will alleviate human suffering. -
: AGRIBUSINESS, THE PATENT SYSTEM, AND BIOPIRACY
NUEVA DELHI, 2004-03-01 (IPS) - India is being swept by an epidemic of biopiracy -- the patenting of indigenous biodiversity and traditional knowledge by global corporations, writes Vandana Shiva, author and international campaigner for women and the environment who received the Right Livelihood Award (Alternative Nobel Prize) in 1993. First it was the neem plant, then basmati rice. Now our wheat has been patented, Shiva writes in this article for IPS. Biopiracy is both legally and morally wrong. By allowing indigenous innovations to be treated as ''inventions'' of the patent ''owner'', biopiracy patents amount to the outright theft of India's scientific, intellectual, and creative achievements and must be challenged. The economic consequences are serious. In the short run, a biopiracy patent robs us of markets overseas for our unique products. In the long run, if these trends are not challenged and intellectual property rights systems changed to prevent biopiracy, we will end up paying royalties for what belongs to us and is necessary for everyday survival. -
: FAIRER TRADE BEST WEAPON AGAINST GLOBAL POVERTY
NEW YORK, 2004-03-01 (IPS) - Although the Millennium Development Goals are technically and economically within reach, what is lacking is the political will to place them at the centre of local, national, and international policies, writes Eveline Herfkens, the Secretary-General's Executive Coordinator for the Millennium Development Goals Campaign. In this article, the author writes that the challenge is to make governments in rich and poor countries accountable to their pledges. International trade has tremendous potential to reduce poverty worldwide and drive economic growth. World Bank estimates reveal that a one-percent increase in the developing countries' share of world exports would lift 128 million people out of poverty. But present trade policies discriminate against developing countries and hinder poor-country participation in the global economy. Doha promised to be the first round of trade negotiations where developing countries were not just beggars at the feast. However, the WTO meeting in Cancun last year became yet another boulevard of broken dreams. Developed countries need to take concrete steps to reform trade policies to ensure that developing countries benefit from the international trading system. -
IRAQ: ONLY THE UN CAN END THE CATASTROPHE
ROME, 2004-03-01 (IPS) - The current debate about the UN's ability to rectify the disasters left by the war in Iraq, rebuild the country, and lead it to democracy omits a fundamental fact: that the strength or weakness of the UN depends solely on the will of and resources provided by its member states, writes Flavio Lotti, secretary general of the Round Table for Peace. Only intervention by the UN in Iraq, with the appropriate powers and resources, is capable of ending the rampant violence, preventing civil war, depriving terrorism of space and support, and protecting the human rights of the Iraqis. In this article, the author writes that the US plan for reconstruction was very efficient in its destruction of existing institutions and the armed forces and in privatising state industries, but it has been a complete failure in building a new democratic state. Similarly, the security concept of the occupation troops and its implementation --in part delegated to private and mercenary companies-- simply does not address the needs of the civilian population. A radical change in policy is urgently needed that gives the UN intervention in Iraq centrality, credibility, and support. -
: RELEASE OF ISRAEL'S NUCLEAR WHISTLE-BLOWER TEST FOR COUNTRY
OSLO, 2004-02-01 (IPS) - The Israeli media are sending mixed signals about what will happen with nuclear whistle-blower Mordechai Vanunu at the end of his 18- year prison term, writes Fredrik S. Heffermehl, Norwegian lawyer, Vice President of the International Peace Bureau, member of the International Vanunu Committee and author of ''Peace is Possible''. Since his arrest, the Israeli government has painted Vanunu as a spy and a traitor who hurt Israel's security since he gave photos of the interior of the Dimona nuclear bomb factory to the Sunday Times of London in 1986. According to recent press reports, the Israeli security establishment is planning a ''restrictions package'' for Vanunu when he leaves jail. Their claim --that Vanunu still has information harmful to Israeli security-- is seen by independent experts on nuclear arms as an empty pretext. A decision by the Sharon government to continue to punish Vanunu would demonstrate a disappointing lack of appreciation, on the part of Israel, of the general progress that has been made towards the goal of a Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction -- recent major concessions from Syria, Libya, and Iran regarding nuclear arms control. -
US: DEBT RELIEF FOR IRAQ BUT NOT DESTITUTE ETHIOPIA.
LONDON, 2004-02-01 (IPS) - The US has been quick to call for cancellation of the odious debts of Iraq largely because it will cost the US very little and free up resources for US projects. Yet at the same time the US is blocking debt cancellation for one of the poorest country in the world, Ethiopia, writes Ann Pettifor, director of Jubilee Research at the New Economics Foundation (nef) and editor of Real World Economic Outlook. This is a glaring double standard, writes Pettifor in this article. Additional relief for Ethiopia is being delayed and blocked by the US with the tacit support of Germany and Japan as US and German creditors have gone to great lengths to obtain international legitimacy for the cancellation of Iraq's debt. The international community must honour commitments made to the millions of Jubilee 2000 supporters worldwide, in Cologne in June 1999. Led by Chancellor Schroder, world leaders promised to deepen and broaden debt relief for countries like Ethiopia. Above all the hypocrisy of their diverging approaches to Iraq and Ethiopia must be thwarted. -
: H2O BUSINESS TURNS PUBLIC WATER INTO PRIVATE WINDFALL
BERKELEY, 2004-02-01 (IPS) - In a seemingly unquenchable thirst for new wellsprings of profit, multinational food and drink industry giants are rapidly draining public water supplies worldwide into a billion-dollar bottled water industry, writes Mark Sommer, director of the US-based Mainstream Media Project and host of award-winning internationally-syndicated radio program ''A World of Possibilities'' The issue, Sommer writes in this analysis, is whether industry giants are drowning in profits at public expense. When there are effectively no rules and no enforcement, when the profit margin puts drug dealers to shame, and an inalienable common resource is privatized at public expense, then we must reconsider the very basis of the enterprise. Pure fresh water is growing ever more scarce as population and pollution accelerate. But the most effective response is not to sell the last liters like fine wines to the fortunate few but to upgrade public water systems worldwide, at far lower individual and aggregate cost, so no one needs to resort to ''private'' water. -
: AN ATTACK ON THE HEART OF MADRID, AND FREE SOCIETY
MADRID, 2004-02-01 (IPS) - The commuter trains that pass through eastern Madrid on their way to Atocha station are one of the primary routes for the daily influx of thousands of students and workers into the city, writes Alberto Ruiz-Gallardon, mayor of Madrid. In this article, the author cites Madrid as a historic bastion of freedom that now defends freedom for all Spaniards with the same determination to not give in to the oppressor that has always given us courage. We must denounce not only those who were materially responsible for this collective assassination, which has already been recognised as a crime against humanity, but also those who are intellectually complicit, who with their silence or indifference contribute equally to make such acts possible. The best way to not give in to the ferocious attack inflicted on us yesterday as members of a free society consists in not losing sight of these people who yesterday, as on any day, made their way to Madrid to give the best of themselves, not to be remembered as victims but as what they were: passengers on trains that carried the life of the city. -
: THE FUTURE OF THE CAR, AND THE EARTH
BERKELEY, 2004-01-10 (IPS) - If oil lubricates the global economy, its increasing scarcity is driving the development of new technologies, writes Mark Sommer, directs the US-based Mainstream Media Project and is host of award-winning syndicated radio programme, A World of Possibilities. In this article, Sommer writes that with crude oil prices soaring and turmoil in oil-rich regions, transition technologies like electric-gas hybrid vehicles are starting to look like a cheap price to pay for salvation. But while current demand for hybrids is rising rapidly, it could yet collapse if its early promise is not followed up by auto makers with major expansion of production capability to meet rising demand, increased R&D to refine the technology, and a wider range of vehicles and models to meet varied user needs. In the case of hybrids, the customer is literally in the driver's seat. If we insist on fuel-efficient vehicles and forcefully address our demands to both auto makers and government regulators, we'll get them sooner rather than later. And by increasing sales volume, we will drive prices down to achieve mass market affordability. In the process, we will save more than money. We'll save ourselves, the author states. -
: AFRICAN RENAISSANCE THROUGH REVOLUTION
PRETORIA, 2004-01-09 (IPS) - There is a continuing and urgent need for Africa's historians, sociologists and others to assess and write about the long-term impact on Africa of these three historical phenomena - slavery, colonialism, and racism, writes Thabo Mbeki, President of South Africa. There are some in our country and the rest of the world who demand that we treat these phenomena merely as a matter of historical record, with no relevance to our contemporary struggles for Africa's rebirth. In part, this is motivated by the determination to compel the victims of gross injustice to forget the harm that was done to them and to induce a collective African amnesia, the better to be able to persuade the victims to blame themselves for their wretchedness. We see this clearly in South Africa, where some insist that apartheid is a thing of the past and that all references to the continuing impact of that past constitute an attempt to ''play the race card''. And yet, for us, it is critically important that we understand the impact of that past in order to empower ourselves to deal effectively with the present, not out of any desire to blame those historically responsible for the most terrible crimes against humanity but to design the policies and programmes that must help us to achieve Africa's renaissance. -
NEPAL: ON THE BRINK OF DISASTER
KATMANDU, 2004-01-09 (IPS) - Nepal's first explosion of religious violence last week has shocked the country, and prompted calls for reviving the kingdom's traditional values of tolerance and compassion, writes Kunda Dixit, editor of the weekly newspaper Nepali Times in Kathmandu. As Kathmandu returns to normal this week after the riots, the government will have to tackle the longer term problem of restoring peace. Everyone in Nepal agrees there is no military victory in this conflict. A negotiated solution needs to be found to address the main political demand of the Maoists: set up a constituent assembly to get rid of the monarchy. The Maoists have hinted in the past that they may be willing to live with a constitutional monarchy and their demand for republic is to leave some flexibility in negotiation. What complicates the government's dealings with the Maoists is that the parliamentary parties are at loggerheads with the king. The three-month old government of prime minister Sher Bahadur Deuba of a centre-right faction of the Nepali Congress has cobbled together a shaky coalition made up of the moderate left United Marxist-Leninist. But four other parties have refused to join, saying King Gyanendra wants to take the country back to the days of absolute monarchy. The king has repeatedly denied this, but says the parties need to mend their behaviour and be more accountable. -
: THE ECLIPSE OF THE FATHER
RIO DE JANEIRO, 2004-01-09 (IPS) - The complex social division of labour, the participation of women in public life, and their harsh criticism of the patriarchy and machismo have thrown the father figure into crisis. In a sense, what has emerged is a fatherless society, or one in which the father is absent, writes Leonardo Boff, a Brazilian writer and theologian. In this article, Boff writes that the eclipse of the father figure has destabilised the traditional family. The increase in divorce brought with it considerable and at times dramatic consequences. According to recent official statistics from the US, 90 percent of children that run away from home come from fatherless families; 70 percent of juvenile crime is committed by youth from homes without fathers; 85 percent of juveniles in prison and 63 percent of juvenile suicides grow up without fathers. It is the father figure that provides an understanding of the difference between the world of the family and the social world, where there is not only well-being but also work; where there is both kindness and conflict; where there is both winning and losing. The absence of a father figure deprives children of structure, leaves them adrift, and erodes their desire to commit to a life plan. We have to bring the father back.
