By HMGS Palihakkara* Read Part 1: https://indepthnews.colo.ba.be/jayantha-dhanapala-an-outstanding-practitioner-of-multilateralism-at-its-best-part-1/ COLOMBO | 5 June 2024 (IDN) — On the challenge of Artificial Intelligence (AI), there is an animated ongoing discourse about the vistas of material advances AI promises as well as the dangers it can morph into. The human penchant to weaponise almost every technology they invent is […]
Still a Few More Chapters to be Written Before Guantánamo Disappears
By Jonathan Power* LUND, Sweden | 4 June 2024 (IDN) — “Guantánamo has become a symbol around the world for an America that flouts the law”. Did you say that? Did I? No. It was the president of the United States of America, Barack Obama, speaking in June 2014. How come that the most powerful […]
Biden Should Stop Gambling with Nuclear Armageddon
By Jeffrey D. Sachs* This article was published in Common Dreams and is being republished with the author’s permission. Each of the last five presidents, both Democrats and Republicans, have brought us closer to the brink. We desperately need leaders with a knack for peace who can steer the nation, and the world, toward a […]
Sheikh Hasina Proclaims Bangladesh as a Global Peace Model
By Tajul Islam* DHAKA | 30 May 2024 (IDN) — Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has declared Bangladesh as a role model in establishing global peace. Speaking at the International Day of UN Peacekeepers 2024 on an event at the Bangabandhu International Conference Centre (BICC) in Dhaka on 29 May, she emphasized the country’s unwavering […]
Smiling Buddha Turns 50: Impacts in Brazil and Worldwide
By Leonam dos Santos Guimarães* RIO DE JANEIRO | 29 May 2024 (IDN) — On 18 May 1974, India carried out its first nuclear explosion, called “Smiling Buddha”, in the Pokhran desert. That explosion was described by the Indian government as a “peaceful nuclear explosion.” India justified the explosion as a display of its technological […]
Bidens Throw Fabulous State Dinner in A First for African Leader
By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network NEW YORK | 29 May 2024 (IDN) — It was Christmas 100 times over at the recent White House dinner for Kenyan President William Ruto—in fact, it was one of the largest-ever state dinners with a guest list of 500—and the first for an African leader since Ghana’s John […]
Trump Does Not Know Leadership
By Jonathan Power* LUND, Sweden | 28 May 2024 (IDN) — Donald Trump is the antithesis of leadership. Walking into the cauldron of the Middle East and denouncing Iran when it had just almost at the same moment re-elected as president a man who presided over the deal that de-fanged his country’s nuclear program and […]
Wealth of Nations and the Poverty of Theory: Debt Restructuring as Rocket Science
By Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake* COLOMBO | 26 May 2024 (IDN) — Calls for divestment from BlackRock and other International Sovereign Bonds (ISB), have echoed across Columbia, Yale and many non-Ivy League universities in the United States recently. BlackRock is heavily invested in weapons companies fueling a genocidal war in Palestine. However, the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF), […]
Economic Recolonisation Bill Tabled in Sri Lanka Parliament
By Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka* COLOMBO | 25 May 2023 (IDN) — A bill named the ‘Economic Transformation Bill’ (ETB) was tabled in parliament this month by President Ranil Wickremesinghe while the country is debating whether Parliamentary or Presidential elections should be held first. Both are due within the next 12 months. In Parliament in August […]
Vesak at the United Nations: Still not a UN Holiday?
By Dr Palitha Kohona (Former) Ambassador of Sri Lanka to China and (former) Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the United Nations, COLOMBO | 25 May 2024 (IDN) — Sri Lanka celebrated the Vesak day 2024 last week with much pomp and ceremony in historic Matale where the Buddha’s teachings were first formally […]