Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS By Mitch Moxley BEIJING, Aug 27, 2010 (IPS) – While Hollywood blockbusters and state-funded historical epics continue to dominate China’s box office, a vibrant independent film scene is quietly growing. Lacking distribution channels that lead to wide audiences, these films, which tend to focus on aspects of day-to-day [...]
ENERGY: Is Fracking Even Worse Than Drilling?
August 27, 2010 By
Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS By William Fisher NEW YORK, Aug 26, 2010 (IPS) – With cleanup of the Gulf of Mexico barely underway, energy companies are already assuming a crouching stance in anticipation of a no-holds-barred attack by environmentalists on what the industry says is the next major breakthrough in natural resource [...]
MEXICO: Environmentalist Peasants Seek Justice
August 27, 2010 By
Global Analyst Online – Global News Blog / IPS By Emilio Godoy MEXICO CITY, Aug 27, 2010 (IPS) – Peasant activists Rodolfo Montiel and Teodoro Cabrera hope to find, at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the justice that eluded them in their home country of Mexico, to which they hope to return to rejoin [...]
Groups Praise U.S. Rights Report as Good First Step
August 27, 2010 By
Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS By William Fisher NEW YORK, Aug 27, 2010 (IPS) – In the first ever U.N.-mandated self-assessment of the United States’ human rights record, the Barack Obama administration has reaffirmed its commitment to closing the detention centre at Guantanamo Bay and to fixing the country’s "broken immigration system". But [...]
HAITI: Scraping by on Mud Cookies
August 27, 2010 By
Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS By Wadner Pierre Credit:Wadner Pierre/IPS PORT-AU-PRINCE, Aug 27, 2010 (IPS) – At six in the morning in Cite Soleil, the poorest zone of Haiti’s capital city, the sun is already up. It’s the start of another workday for Lurene Jeanti, making cookies from mud, butter and salt. She’s [...]
SOUTH AFRICA: Public Health Strained by Nurses’ Strike
August 27, 2010 By
Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS By Chris Stein JOHANNESBURG, Aug 27, 2010 (IPS) – Striking health workers have continued their work stoppage despite accusations that it endangers patients’ lives. They are part of a nationwide strike by public sector workers that has some observers concerned that rising wage demands could harm South Africa’s [...]
New Report Cautions Companies Operating in Israel
August 27, 2010 By
Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IDN By IDN Middle East Desk IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis (IDN) – A new report has warned that companies with operations and suppliers in Israel, or offshore projects in disputed waters in the region, face the risk of "complicity in human rights violations by state security forces". Besides, terrorism, internal violence [...]
Obama Resists Pressure for Red Line on Iran’s Nuclear Capability
August 27, 2010 By
Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS By Gareth Porter* WASHINGTON, Aug 26, 2010 (IPS) – President Barack Obama’s refusal in a White House briefing earlier this month to announce a "red line" in regard to the Iran nuclear programme represented another in a series of rebuffs of pressure from Defence Secretary Robert Gates for [...]
SOUTH-EAST ASIA: China Flexes Hydropower Muscle
August 27, 2010 By
Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS By Marwaan Macan-Markar BANGKOK, Aug 27, 2010 (IPS) – After all the turbines in the Xiaowan hydropower station sputtered to life this week in China’s south-west Yunnan province, the Asian giant was able to lay claim to having the world’s largest hydropower capacity. A "great leap forward" was [...]
Bridge to Nowhere – Road to Disaster
Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IDN By Julio Godoy IDN-InDepth NewsViewpoint BERLIN (IDN) – Practitioners of realpolitik would not claim they are poets, very much in the way that they do dismiss they are utopians. As former German chancellor Helmut Schmidt, neither a poet nor utopian, once famously put it: If you have visions, [...]