OPINION

Photo: Anti-war protest against the Vietnam War in Washington, D.C. on April 24, 1971. The Vietnam War had already been going on for a number of years when President Lyndon Johnson decided he wanted to ratchet up the fighting. In August 1964 a fictitious event was manufactured. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

U.S. Administrations' Long List of Distortions and Lies

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) - Are our governments economical with the truth, if not maliciously misleading? Do governments the world over lie? Of course yes, because there are always occasions when realpolitik appears to demand it.

Most recently, many are arguing, we have seen an attempt to obfuscate the truth when President Donald Trump ordered missiles to be fired at an airbase in Syria in, he said, retaliation for an attack using sarin gas by the Syrian government on unarmed civilians. Critics blame the rebels.

: Jonathan Power; OPINION; 11 April 2017

Photo: Sergio Duarte, then UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, speaks to journalists on the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty on 23 September 2011 at the United Nations, New York. Credit: UN Photo/JC McIlwaine

Banning Nuclear Weapons – An Auspicious Start

By Sergio Duarte, former UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs*

NEW YORK (IDN) - Despite being shunned by the nine possessors of nuclear weapons and most of their allies, the first part of the negotiations mandated by the United Nations General Assembly on a legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total elimination, ended on an optimistic tone on March 31.

Delegations from 120-plus States will return to New York in mid-June to start discussing the draft treaty to be presented by the President of the Conference, Ambassador Elayne Whyte-Gomez of Costa Rica.

: Sergio Duarte; OPINION; 06 April 2017

Photo: Recep Tayyip Erdoğan taking part in a Victory Day ceremony on 30 August 2014

Turkey and the Waxing Dangers of Populism

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) - The long talked-about referendum in Turkey will happen on April 16. In effect voters have to decide whether the president, Recep Erdogan, in theory the incumbent of a relatively modest political post, should now be given the powers of the president and prime minister together.

Combined with a large majority in Parliament he would have enormous power to shape Turkey around his pro-Islamic agenda. Although working within a democratic system, Erdogan is in many ways a populist, rather in the mould of President Donald Trump.

: Jonathan Power; OPINION; 04 April 2017

Photo: President Donald Trump (right) and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (left) at joint press conference on February 15. 2017. Credit: Whitehouse.gov

How U.S. Policies Are Perpetuating Wars

Viewpoint by Ann Wright*

NEW YORK (IDN-INPS) - Fourteen years ago on March 19, 2003, I resigned from the U.S. government in opposition to President George W. Bush’s decision to invade and occupy Iraq, an oil-rich Arab/Muslim country that had nothing to do with the events of September 11, 2001, and that the Bush Administration knew did not have weapons of mass destruction.

In my letter of resignation, I wrote of my deep concerns about Bush’s decision to attack Iraq and the predictable large number of civilian casualties from that military attack. But I also detailed my concerns on other issues: the lack of U.S. effort on resolving the Israel-Palestinian conflict, the U.S. failure to engage North Korea to curb nuclear and missile development, and the curtailment of civil liberties in the United States through the Patriot Act.

: Opinion Editor; OPINION; 03 April 2017

Photo: U.S. President Donald Trump signing the "Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States" order, flanked by Vice President Mike Pence (left) and Secretary of Defense James Mattis (right). Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Peace Is Possible Without Perpetuating Militarization

Viewpoint by Veterans For Peace

Veterans for Peace, an international organization made up of military veterans, military family members, and allies, calls for a reduction in the Pentagon budget and an increase in spending to meet human needs at home and abroad. This statement originally appeared on the organization's website.

ST. LOUIS, Missouri (IDN-INPS) - As military veterans from WWII to the current era of conflicts, who have trained for, and in many cases, fought in U.S. wars, we know that current U.S. policies have not only failed to bring peace but are morally bankrupt.

Veterans For Peace has called for a different approach than war to demonstrate power and strength and prevent and end violent conflict. For the past thirty-two years, we have called for the abolishment of war as an instrument of national policy.

: Opinion Editor; OPINION; 01 April 2017

Photo: Alice Slater | Credit: channer.tv

A Shift in the Public Conversation to Ban the Bomb

Viewpoint by Alice Slater

Alice Slater is New York Director of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, who serves on the Coordinating Committee of World Beyond War.

NEW YORK (IDN) – This week (March 27-31) the UN General Assembly held the opening session of a ground-breaking conference “to negotiate a legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total elimination” just as the world has already done to ban biological and chemical weapons as well as landmines and cluster bombs.

The historic conference began with a bizarre Trumpian boycott on its first day, when Nikki Haley, Trump’s newly appointed U.S. Ambassador to the UN , flanked by the ambassadors from the UK and France stationed in front of the closed doors to the UN General Assembly, where 132 nations were about to start negotiations, staged a press event, with no questions permitted.

: Opinion Editor; ARMAMENTS; 31 March 2017

2020 NPT Review Conference Needs Innovative Strategies

By Jayantha Dhanapala

“ . . . and thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.” - Shakespeare: Twelfth Night

Note: The first Preparatory Committee for the 2020 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) will meet from May 2 to 12, 2017 in Vienna, Austria. Following the text of a Policy Brief Jayantha Dhanapala – a former United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs, and a former Ambassador of Sri Lanka – did for the Asia Pacific Leaders Network (APLN) middle of March 2017. It is being reproduced with the permission of the author who currently serves as the 11th President of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, These are his personal views.

: Jayantha Dhanapala; ARMAMENTS; 28 March 2017

Photo: Second Chittagong Hill Tracts Rural Development Project in Bangladesh. Credit. Asian Development Bank.

The Asian Poor Should Not Be Neglected

By Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) - The Asian economies are picking up speed again. After the big hit from Wall Street when the bank, Lehman Brothers, collapsed in a heap in 2008, sending shock waves everywhere, a recovery is now in the works.

How many child deaths in the Third World did these bankers cause? Another question is will future growth be like the past – fast but severely inequitable? The same growth before 2008 that reduced absolute poverty created a widening gulf between the haves and have-nots.

But isn’t that sufficient for the day, many ask? Absolute poverty must be the key mark of progress – raising incomes, giving people more money to seek education for their children or medical care or filling the coffers for the state so that it can fund bore holes in the countryside and sewers in the urban slums.

: Jonathan Power; OPINION; 28 March 2017

Photo: Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury. Credit: Mitsu (Eric) Kimura, SUA Archivist.

'If We are Serious About Peace and Development, We Must Take Women Seriously'

By Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury

Without peace, development is impossible, and without development, peace is not achievable, but without women, neither peace nor development is possible, writes Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury, former Under-Secretary-General and High Representative of the United Nations. He is an internationally recognized initiator of the UNSCR 1325 as the President of the UN Security Council in March 2000.

NEW YORK (IDN) - The biggest annual gathering of activists on women’s issues from all parts of the world converging at the United Nations ended on March 24 after its two-week meeting. That gathering is the regular sessions of the Commission on the Status of Women. This year it was the Commission’s 61st session (UN CSW 61). Many of the participants at these sessions have direct grassroots connections with their feet on the ground and understand the challenges and obstacles – physical, economic, political, societal, cultural and attitudinal – which women face on a daily basis.

: IDN-INPS UN Bureau; UN INSIDER; 26 March 2017

Photo: Ambassador Kairat Umarov, Permanent Representative of the Republic of Kazakhstan to the United Nations (second from left) on Security Council mission to the Lake Chad Basin. . The Permanent Representatives of France, UK and Senegal led the Mission Credit: UK Mission to the UN/Lorey Campese.

Lake Chad Basin: Strengthen the Security-Development Nexus

By Kairat Umarov

Ambassador Kairat Umarov is Permanent Representative of the Republic of Kazakhstan to the United Nations. He was a member of the Security Council Visiting Mission to the Lake Chad Basin from March 2 to 7, 2017. The Permanent Representatives of France, UK and Senegal led the Mission. Kazakhstan joined the UN Security Council as a non-permanent member for the two-year period 2017-2018.

NEW YORK (IDN) – The situation across the Lake Chad Basin is extremely fragile and volatile. Triggered by a deteriorating humanitarian situation, the crisis has worsened and is now the fourth largest on Earth, though barely known worldwide.