Viewpoint by Katrina vanden Heuvel* NEW YORK (IDN) — October 16 marks 60 years since the Cuban missile crisis—the 13-day standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union widely regarded as the closest we ever came to global nuclear war. On this anniversary, as we veer terrifyingly close to the brink of Armageddon once […]
Make Persons with Disabilities Integral Players in Fully Inclusive Societies
Viewpoint by Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana The writer is an Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP). BANGKOK (IDN) — Ten years ago, the Asia-Pacific region came together and designed the world’s first set of disability-specific development goals: the Incheon Strategy to “Make […]
Don’t Just Worry About Nuclear War — Do Something to Help Prevent It
Viewpoint by Norman Solomon SAN FRANCISO (IDN) — This is an emergency. Right now, we’re closer to a cataclysmic nuclear war than at any other time since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. One assessment after another has said the current situation is even more dangerous. Yet few members of Congress are advocating for any […]
Ukraine War Stresses the Need for Abolishing Nuclear Weapons
Viewpoint by Jonathan Power LUND, Sweden (IDN) — We were standing in Hiroshima looking at a stonewall. All there was to see was a shadow of a man. It had been etched into the wall at the moment of his obliteration by the blinding light of the first atomic bomb. Olof Palme, prime minister of […]
Brazil’s Lula Remerges—in a Very Different Political World
Viewpoint by Sonali Kolhatkar This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute. Sonali Kolhatkar is the founder, host and executive producer of “Rising Up With Sonali,” a television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations. LOS ANGELES (IDN) — Brazil’s first round of […]
The West Is Exposing Itself to Double Standards by Weaponizing Human Rights
Viewpoint by Kalinga Seneviratne BANGKOK (IDN) — The recently concluded 51st session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva exposed once again the double standards of the global human rights agenda. West’s failure to get a resolution adopted at the UNHRC on October 6 on further investigation into the violation of human […]
Putin’s War in Ukraine Even More Senseless Than World War I
Viewpoint by Paul Goble Eurasia Review issued this article. OREGON, USA (IDN) — There is nearly universal consensus that World War I was the most senseless conflict in modern times, Yury Yarym-Agayev says; but in fact, Putin’s war in Ukraine is even more senseless than that war of a century ago in that none of […]
Ukrainian Organization Does Not Deserve a Nobel Peace Prize
Viewpoint by Ariel Gold and Medea Benjamin* COUNTERCURRENTS issued this article on October 7, 2022. NEW YORK (IDN) — In what was described as a harsh rebuke of Russia, the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the Ukrainian human rights organization ‘Center for Civil Liberties’, along with Belarusian human rights advocate Ales Bialiatski and […]
Pacific Leaders Urge Re-Focus on Climate Emergency
Viewpoint by Volker Boege Toda Peace Institute issued this article, and it is being republished with their permission. BRISBANE, Australia (IDN) — At the 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly in September 2022, the leaders of the small island—or ‘big ocean’—countries in the Pacific called for a re-focus on the global climate emergency. […]
Africa Would Do Well to Stop Playing with Fire
Viewpoint by Azu Ishiekwene The writer is the Managing Director/Editor-in-Chief of LEADERSHIP newspaper based in Abuja, Nigeria. ABUJA (IDN) — There is a fire in Ouagadougou. And who’s to say where it’s catching next? For the second time in eight months, the military in Burkina Faso struck in a palace coup that removed military leader […]