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Viewpoint by Dr Asoka Bandarage
The writer, a scholar and practitioner, has taught at Yale, Brandeis, Mount Holyoke (where she received tenure), Georgetown, American and other universities and colleges in the U.S. and abroad
COLOMBO (IDN) — The recent UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) resolution A/HRC/46/L.1/Rev.1 of March 16 has brought extensive charges against Sri Lanka over alleged human rights violations but is arguably seriously flawed.
Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*
LUND, Sweden (IDN) — History and events have not been kind to Russia. Napoleon’s invasion, revolution, two world wars, Hitler’s invasion, Stalin’s communism and, most recently, the expansion of NATO, have shattered the Russian people’s equilibrium and self-regard time and time again.
At the end of the Cold War and with agreement on the NATO-Russia Founding Act it seemed that big steps towards a new kind of future were being taken. First, Russia would have a seat at NATO's table. Later it would join NATO. Later still, the European Union. Some said this would happen over ten years, others twenty.
By Andrei Grachev
A Russian historian, political analyst and journalist, Dr Andrei Grachev, was the adviser for Mikhail Gorbachev and official Spokesman of the President of the USSR until his resignation in December 1991. InDepthNews is re-publishing this article courtesy of Other News. Original link > https://www.other-news.info/2021/03/the-time-of-gorbachev
MOSCOW (IDN) — Two books were published practically simultaneously in Great Britain and France to commemorate the forthcoming 30th anniversary of the breakup of the Soviet Union.
By Ramu Damodaran
The writer is Chief, United Nations Academic Impact (UNAI) hosted in the Department of Global Communications. This OpEd first appeared in the latest #WhyWeCare, @ImpactUN.
NEW YORK (IDN | UNAI) — "STOP" said the imperious red sign (actually two red signs) as I ventured to the frostily frigid February frontline of the Atlantic coast, an injunction reminiscent of an earlier time when the United States chose to inhibit its interests within an isolated domain, a time that the Second World War brought to a definitive end when, in 1941, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill concluded the Charter named for that ocean, one of whose clauses spoke of a peace that "should enable all men to transverse the high seas and oceans without hindrance", "voyages as metaphorical as literal, the nascent nautical navigations that we speak of today" as "global engagement", in the phrase of the title of the annual summit convened by the United Nations Association of the United States of America (UNA-USA) and the United Nations Foundation (UNF).
On the eve of the Communist Party of China’s centenary in July 2021, the story of the country’s first women’s military brigade in the 1930s continues to find life in popular culture and the imagination of the Chinese people.
Viewpoint by Tings Chak *
HAVANA (IDN) – “Are you a proletarian?” asks the brigade commander. Receiving no response, she clarifies her question: “Do you own land?”
Viewpoint by Sergio Duarte
The author is Ambassador, President of Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs and former UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs.
NEW YORK (IDN) – Seventy-five years ago, in January 1946, the United Nations General Assembly met for the first time after the signature of the Charter. Its first resolution was adopted on the 24th of that month. The developments mentioned and commented below come to mind as we recall the outcome of that inaugural session of the Assembly.
Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*
LUND, Sweden (IDN) – Early December the former president of France Valery Giscard D’Estaing died. The Guardian in its obituary described him as “the grand old man of French politics”. President Emanuel Macron said, “his presidency had transformed France and his direction still guides its way”. The New York Times said he was “a modern-minded conservative”.
Unlike many of the other obituaries, the New York Times failed to mention the scandal that was a major factor in bringing him down when he ran for a second term in 1981. He was accused and it was proved that he had accepted a gift of diamonds from Emperor Bokassa of the Central African Republic valued at about quarter of a million US dollars.
Viewpoint by Prabir Purkayastha*
NEW DELHI (IDN) – The Nobel Prize in physics for 2020 has been shared by Roger Penrose, the mathematical physicist, for his work on the theoretical basis of black holes, and astronomers Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez, who led independent teams, for verifying the existence of such a black hole at the centre of our Milky Way galaxy. Penrose showed that the consequence of Einstein’s general theory of relativity is the formation of black holes, not only in collapsing stars but also in certain dense regions of space.
Burt Neuborne Shows 20 Ways Trump Is Copying Hitler’s Early Rhetoric and Policies
By Steven Rosenfeld *
The writer is a senior writing fellow and the editor and chief correspondent of Voting Booth, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA, USA (IDN) – A new book by one of the nation’s foremost civil liberties lawyers powerfully describes how America’s constitutional checks and balances are being pushed to the brink by a president who is consciously following Adolf Hitler’s extremist propaganda and policy template from the early 1930s—when the Nazis took power in Germany.
Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*
LUND, Sweden (IDN) – Seventy-five years ago the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima on August 6 and on Nagasaki on August 9 was premeditated mass murder.
President Harry Truman had a workable alternative to using the atom bomb – to cooperate with Stalin, as Roosevelt and Churchill had done on the Western front, in the Soviet advance on Japan, rather than making it a race for control.
Indeed, it was the Soviet advance that convinced Japan to surrender.** Although unaware of each other’s thinking both Truman and the Japanese leadership shared a common cause – they both wanted to pre-empt the possibility of the Soviet Union occupying parts of Japan before the U.S. had got its boots on Japanese ground. Truman did not want to be compelled to concede Soviet participation in the government of post-surrender, occupied, Japan.
IDN-InDepthNews offers news analyses, features, reports and viewpoints that impact the world and its peoples. It has been online since 2009. Its network spans countries around the world.