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IDN-InDepthNews

 

CENTRAL ASIA

   

 

Acronym of the Year

    

UN INSIDER

OPINION

Photo: New President of Liberia, George Weah. Credit: Daily Post, Nigeria

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – It was late 2003, the Liberian war was winding down after taking the lives of 250,000 civilians, spawning a small army of deadly child soldiers, and I was sitting at lunch in Monrovia inside the president’s palatial office and residence with the American ambassador on my right and George Weah, Fifa’s World Footballer of the Year, on my left.

When I introduced myself to the ambassador he made it clear he didn’t want to talk. He wasn’t happy having ended up with a journalist next to him. Every 15 minutes an aide would rush up to him with the latest news on the fighting. We could hear the sound of rifles cracking. I asked him if he was nervous. He ignored me. But Weah was more than ready to chat.

OPINION

Image Credit: happynewyear2018x.com

Viewpoint by Michele Zizzari*

CASTELLAMMARE DI STABIA, Italy (IDN) – What can we say about the fact that we live in such an inhuman world ... where even the most superfluous of personal whims, the smallest interest or private profit is enough to make us completely ignore others or consider them (especially if poor, or for some other reason) only with annoyance and disdain?

A narrow, widespread, often gratuitous, induced, unmotivated egoism ... that we even try to justify invoking a banal and misunderstood sense of peaceful life ... which then translates into an even less noble "let's mind our own business" or "who makes us do it?"

OPINION

Photo: President Trump delivers remarks on tax reform in the Grand Foyer of the White House on 13 December 2017. Credit: Official White House Photo by Stefanie Chazes.

By Martin Khor

Martin Khor is the Executive Director of the South Centre. He can be contacted at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. This analysis first appeared on South Bulletin 100, December 2017 with the caption: 'In 2017, Donald Trump dominated the year by using US clout to change many aspects of global relations, and not for the better.'

GENEVA (IDN-INPS) – What a year it has been! As 2017 slips away, and 2018 dawns, many wonder if the world will ever be the same. Credit or blame goes mainly to United States President Donald Trump for this radical change. This time last year, after he won the presidential elections, it was a toss-up whether Trump would implement his campaign promises or become a more statesmanlike President.

OPINION

Photo: Fumiyasu Akegawa addressing an audience during one of his visits to Thailand and Vietnam. Credit: DEVNET Japan

Viewpoint by Fumiyasu Akegawa

Fumiyasu Akegawa is founder and president of DEVNET Japan.

TOKYO (IDN) – Since DEVNET Japan participated in August 2015 in Expo 2015 hosted by the Italian city of Milan, the organization set up in March 2013 to promote Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) particularly in Southeast Asia has made considerable strides.

It was one of the notable non-official participants of the universal exhibition. Then known as DEVNET Tokyo Foundation, we availed of Milan Expo 2015 to throw light on our agenda focused on promoting seven themes: poverty alleviation; food security; humanitarian support; environmental protection; advanced technology and energy saving; support of women entrepreneurs and improvement of women's status; and the establishment of sustainable developing society.

OPINION

Photo: City officials in New York allowed a developer to segregate a high-rise condo between rich and poor. According to reports by New York Post, developers of Extell, a condo on the Upper West Side, got the Department of Housing Preservation and Development to approve a separate entrance for poorer residents. Credit: Rolling out

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – Every so often reports emerge that attempt to measure which are the best countries to live in. The Nordic countries plus New Zealand, Holland and Switzerland, usually come out top. Sweden is number one just for the sheer stability of life and security. Denmark is seen as the most agreeable place to live. The highest rate of longevity is found in Japan. The best schools are in Finland, New Zealand and Canada. Political and press freedom put the Nordics at the top of the league.

Last month, the Legatum Institute based in London published a report looking at inequality. Its timing could not be more perfect with the U.S. Congress last week (December 20) passing President Donald Trump’s tax bill which increases inequality by a substantial amount.

OPINION

Photo (left to right): The Norwegian Nobel Committee Chair Berit Reiss-Andersen; ICAN campaigner Setsuko Thurlow who survived the bombing of Hiroshima as a 13-year-old; ICAN Executive Director Beatrice Fihn. Credit: ICAN

By Alice Slater*

NEW YORK (IDN-INPS) – In Oslo on December 10, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) and was accepted on behalf of the Campaign by its executive director, Beatrice Fihn, and by Setsuko Thurlow, an ICAN campaigner and survivor of the 1945 Hiroshima bombing.

Both spoke for the thousands of campaigners in over 400 organizations and more than 100 countries around the world who succeeded this fall in working with friendly governments to move a majority of states at the United Nations to adopt a treaty to prohibit to ban nuclear weapons, making their possession, use, or threat of use unlawful.

OPINION

Photo: The scale of destruction in Aleppo is massive and heavy equipment is urgently needed to remove debris. Credit: UNHCR/Bassam Diab

By António Guterres, UN Secretary-General

Following are extensive excerpts from UN Secretary-General António Guterres' remarks at open debate of the Security Council on 'Addressing complex contemporary challenges to international peace and security' on December 20, 2017 during Japan's presidency of the Council for the month. – The Editor

UNITED NATIONS (IDN-INPS) – I would like to make three main points today. First, we are seeing not only a quantitative but also a qualitative change in threats to international peace and security. The perils of nuclear weapons are again front and centre, with tensions higher than they have been since the end of the Cold War.

OPINION

Photo: The U.S. nuclear warheads are stored in some 21 locations, which include 13 U.S. states and 5 European countries. Credit: worldatlas.com

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – The nuclear weapon missile business is contradictory, full of missteps, highly dangerous and prepared in its madness (Mutually Assured Destruction, aka MAD, they used to call it in Cold War days) to plunge the world into a nuclear war that will reduce most of the world to dust.

A new book, “The Doomsday Machine” by Daniel Ellsberg tells the whole nuclear bomb story in detail. No one has done it better. The only rival is the movie, “Dr Strangelove”, that got the essentials right without being privy to much of the Ellsberg’s knowledge.

OPINION

Photo: Setsuko Thurlow delivering her Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech. Credit. Norwegian Nobel Committee.

By Setsuko Thurlow

Setsuko Thurlow is a Japanese-Canadian nuclear disarmament campaigner who survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in 1945. She is a leading figure in the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize. Thurlow accepted the prize on behalf of the campaign at a ceremony in Oslo on 10 December 2017, together with Beatrice Fihn, the executive director of ICAN. Following are extensive excerpts from her Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech. – The Editor

OSLO (IDN) – It is a great privilege to accept this award, together with Beatrice, on behalf of all the remarkable human beings who form the ICAN movement. You each give me such tremendous hope that we can – and will – bring the era of nuclear weapons to an end.

ARMAMENTS
Nuclear Weapons

Photo: Roman siege and destruction of Jerusalem (David Roberts,1850). Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) - Poets as diverse as William Blake and Yehuda Amichai have sung the praises of the heavenly Jerusalem, a land without strife or rancour, war or bitterness, envy, acquisitiveness or hatred.

Until last week and President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s de facto capital, Israel, Fatah, Hamas and their common interlocutor, the U.S., had the historic opportunity to take a giant step towards making the present day Jerusalem acquire, at least in some of its aspects, the earthly prototype of the heavenly Jerusalem.

OPINION

  1. Miles To Go Before Corruption Is Rooted Out
  2. No More Bluster, A Way Out of North Korean Nuclear Crisis
  3. Reducing the Risk of Nuclear Miscalculation
  4. Decode Trump To Halt His Access To U.S. Nuclear Codes
  5. China and UNIDO Have Engaged in Substantial Cooperation

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