IDEALS

JOHANNESBURG, (Mar. 29, 2012) IPS/GIN – South Africa’s membership of the bloc of leading emerging economies and its unique position in Africa heralded the country’s role as a gateway into the African continent. However, trade experts question whether it can live up to this position as investors begin to increasingly look towards other African markets.

In 2003 South Africa became part of the IBSA grouping (India, Brazil and South Africa), and seven years later it joined the bloc of countries now known as BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). Economists have predicted that the dynamic growth of the BRICS countries will bring about a shift in economic power toward the developing world.

And South Africa, as the most developed country in Africa, offers the infrastructure and services to unlock the region’s frontiers, they say. Read the rest of this entry →

ALMATY, (Mar. 29, 2012) IPS/GIN – As the trial began this week of 37 alleged participants in a strike-related riot, the man who did the most to help the striking oil workers and to publicize their cause, Mukhtar Ablyazov, remained far beyond the Kazakhstan government’s grasp.

Ablyazov, a wealthy banker who disappeared from view in February after he was sentenced to at least a year in jail by a London court on contempt charges, is variously seen in his native Kazakhstan as the only bulwark against the increasingly harsh rule of President Nursultan Nazarbayev; as a thief who betrayed his investors, and as the plotter of a series of terrorist attacks that were not carried out.

The diminutive 49-year-old Kazakh had fled to London, where he was granted political asylum, after the government rescued and took over BTA Bank in 2009, which he had turned into Kazakhstan’s largest. The institution faced bankruptcy after the global financial crisis dried up the flood of cheap credit that had funded the rapid expansion of Kazakhstan’s banks, revealing balance sheets choking on bad loans  none worse than BTA’s. Read the rest of this entry →

GUATEMALA CITY, (Mar. 30, 2012) IPS/GIN – “We want land where we can live and grow food to feed ourselves,” said Pedro Ichich, one of several thousand indigenous farmers who marched to the Guatemalan capital to demand solutions to the age-old conflict over land.

The government of right-wing President Otto Perez Molina met with representatives of the demonstrators this week. They are now waiting to see what will happen.

Ichich, his wife and five children jointed the protesters on the 214-km march that started out on Mar. 19 from Cob·n, in the northern province of Alta Verapaz, and reached Guatemala City eight days later, where they gathered outside the seat of government. Read the rest of this entry →

JERUSALEM, (Mar. 29, 2012) IPS/GIN – As 29-year-old Palestinian prisoner Hana Shalabi entered day 43 of her open-ended hunger strike in a hospital bed in northern Israel, over two dozen other Palestinian prisoners are following suit, refusing food as a way to protest their arrest, detention and treatment in Israeli prisons.

“The hunger strikes are highlighting the conditions and the treatment that these prisoners face in the Israeli system, whether in the process of their detention or later in interrogation or in the courts or in the prisons,” Sahar Francis, Director of the Ramallah-based Addameer Palestinian prisoner support organisation, told IPS.

“It’s a whole system that’s built on the oppression and violation of basic rights of these detainees and prisoners,” Francis said. Read the rest of this entry →

ATLANTA, Georgia, March 30, 2012 IPS/GIN – In the three years since its inception, the Tea Party has cemented its place in U.S. politics, routinely making waves in political races of national interest. At the same time, some local Tea Party groups are beginning to build post-partisan coalitions that are both surprising and counterintuitive.

The Tea Party is not a formal political organization; it is an amalgam of loosely affiliated organizations. Difficult to characterize as a whole, the movement at times fails to present a unified front, with some of its groups claiming to possess the support of some people who call themselves Tea Party members even while dissociating themselves from others.

These organizations include the Tea Party Patriots, which claims over one million members and about 3,500 affiliated state and local organizations; Tea Party Nation (TPN), a more socially conservative political organization that is often at odds with the Tea Party Patriots; the Tea Party Express, a Political Action Committee (PAC) and bus tour; the National Tea Party Federation; and the Nationwide Tea Party Coalition. Read the rest of this entry →

RIO DE JANEIRO, (Mar. 30, 2012) IPS/GIN – Outside the Military Club in Rio de Janeiro, where a commemoration of the anniversary of the 1964 coup d’Ètat was being held, hundreds of demonstrators, many of them teenagers, shouted slogans and threw eggs at arriving members in protest.

Protests are common in other Latin American countries that have suffered dictatorships. But in Brazil this scene signalled the dawn of a mass public reaction, 27 years after the country’s transition to democracy.

On Mar. 29, at the time set for the demonstration, which was organized over online social networking sites, a single protester could be seen, stoically holding a piece of paper reading “A coup is not a revolution.” Read the rest of this entry →

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, (Mar. 30, 2012) IPS/GIN – When Europe signed an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the Caribbean Forum countries in 2008, the intention was to boost trade and services between the two regions.

But four years later, the Caribbean, particularly the private sector, is failing to take full advantage of many benefits of the deal, according to a new report by the Guyana-based Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretariat EPA Implementation Unit.

The unit just completed a review of the legal framework governing investment flows between CARIFORUM, which includes the 15-member CARICOM grouping and the Dominican Republic, and the EU to evaluate their consistency with commitments in international agreements. Read the rest of this entry →

TEL AVIV, (Mar. 29, 2012) IPS/GIN – The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) held its conference this month in Israel for the first time. Do future wars by land, sea and air belong to robots?

The modern battlefield pushes troops to their limit. Infantrymen haul heavy loads on their backs which hinders their combat performance.

The REX field-porter, a robot, might potentially, become the warrior’s best friend it can now accompany field units in war zones, carrying 200 kg of gear. Read the rest of this entry →

ZAWIYAH, Libya, Mar. 31, 2012 IPS/GIN – A few hundred police cadets in ad hoc camouflage uniforms march up and down the grounds at a training centre in the coastal town Zawiyah. “You are the people protecting the revolution and symbol of our pride,” proclaims the scrawled writing on the wall behind them.

For these former rebel fighters – called “thuwar” in last year’s conflict against the Gaddafi regime – this is the final stage of a 45-day police basic training course run by the Ministry of Interior.

Integration of rebels into the Libyan national army and police, or their return to civilian life, is critically important to the country’s ability to navigate the fragile post-conflict period of elections, reconstruction and institution building. Read the rest of this entry →

WASHINGTON, (Mar. 27, 2012) IPS/GIN – At the third annual conference of J Street, the “pro-Israel, pro-peace” lobby group that is widely seen as a counterweight to the more right-wing American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Israel-Palestine conflict took the focus back from the ongoing tension with Iran.

There was much talk of Iran at the Washington conference, but J Street intended to shift attention back to the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has successfully focused international attention on Iran, pushing the Palestinian issue off the agenda. Read the rest of this entry →