USA and Canada

$Photo: Sierra Club president Ramón Cruz and director of energy campaigns Kelly Sheehan gather with Sierra Club staff and risk arrest on the White House fence. The protesters want the Biden administration to stop fracked gas exports, end fossil fuel subsidies, build back fossil free, and invest in local communities. | Credit: Dayna Reggero$

Biden Has Doubled Down on Trump’s Dangerous and Destabilizing Policies

Viewpoint by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies*

NEW YORK (IDN) — U.S. President Biden and the Democrats were highly critical of President Trump’s foreign policy, so it was reasonable to expect that Biden would quickly remedy its worst impacts. As a senior member of the Obama administration, Biden surely needed no schooling on Obama’s diplomatic agreements with Cuba and Iran, both of which began to resolve long-standing foreign policy problems and provided models for the renewed emphasis on diplomacy that Biden was promising.

: Opinion Editor; OPINION; 19 January 2022

Photo: Some family members had to be carried out of the service after being overcome with grief. Credit: Dean Moses.

Growing Calls for Investigation into Bronx Fire That Took Over a Dozen African Lives

By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network

NEW YORK (IDN) — A smoky building fire that raced through a 19-story building on an early Sunday this month took 17 lives—adults and children, many from the African nation of The Gambia—is raising questions about the building’s reported insufficient heat and automatic doors that should have been shut but weren’t working.

: Global Information Network; THE WORLD; USA and Canada; 18 January 2022

Photo: Actor Sydney Poitier Meets Mandela. Source: AP Archive (18 May 1996).

Recollecting Poitier’s Brush with Africa in Early American Films

By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network

NEW YORK (IDN) — Not long ago, movies made in Hollywood filmed in major cities in Africa displayed an unapologetic ignorance of even minimal facts about the continent.

Cities named Lagos, Nairobi or Johannesburg became “somewhere in Africa”, anti-colonial sentiments became a “coloured struggle”, and the continent became a “setting and backdrop which eliminates the African as a human factor.”

: Global Information Network; ARTS & CULTURE; 11 January 2022

Putin and Biden: Who Will Blink First?

Viewpoint by Herbert Wulf

This article was issued by the Toda Peace Institute and is being republished with their permission.

After constant Cold War rhetoric and sabre-rattling, the presidents of the USA and Russia talk to each other about the Ukraine conflict and more generally about the security architecture in Europe. The EU is directly affected but is left out and wonders.

BONN (IDN) — In recent years, observers of the security situation in Europe have been reminded of the times of the Cold War. Ice age, confrontation and mutual mistrust prevail.

: Opinion Editor; OPINION; 06 January 2022

Photo: Workers at Ethiopia Indistrial Park. Source: Addis Standard

Three African Countries Lose U.S. Trade Benefits Over Rights Violations

By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network

NEW YORK (IDN) — The Biden administration has cracked down on three African countries accused of serious rights violations, expelling them from AGOA, a duty-free trade program worth millions in benefits.

The three countries—Ethiopia, Mali and Guinea—had been warned in November of the threatened action which affects imports and exports of their products to the U.S.

: Global Information Network; THE WORLD; USA and Canada; 04 January 2022

Photo: Japan’s Ground Self-Defence Force demonstrated joint training with the US Marine Corps to the media in Hachinohe, Aomori Prefecture, on the December 7. Credit: ChinaNews.com

A Japan-US ‘Island Chain’ Threatens to Provoke Backlash from China and Russia

Viewpoint by M K Bhadrakumar *

NEW DELHI (IDN) — A Kyodo News agency report on December 23 cited Japanese government sources to the effect that Tokyo and Washington have drawn up a draft joint operation plan that would enable the setup of an attack base along the Nansei island chain in Japan’s southwest in the event of a Taiwan contingency.

: Opinion Editor; OPINION; 30 December 2021

Photo: The talks are aimed at bringing Iran back into full compliance with the 2015 deal and paving the way for the US to rejoin. Source: Germany's international broadcaster Deutsche Welle.

The US Conceding Alone Would Lead to Successful Negotiations

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN) — The negotiations over Iran’s supposed nuclear bomb-building abilities seem to be stuck in a rut. On December 27, they re-started once again. Given the detailed undertakings by Iran made in the agreement negotiated by the administration of President Barack Obama before President Donald Trump sabotaged it, it should have only been a hop, skip and a jump to forge a final agreement once President Joe Biden decided to resurrect it.

: Jonathan Power; THE WORLD; Asia-Pacific; 28 December 2021

Photo: UNMAS, MINUSMA Mark International Day for Mine Awareness. Robots have been deployed for mine clearance by military authorities in many countries, but concerns are rising over regulation of autonomous weapons which use Artificial Intelligence. UN Photo/Marco Dormino

US, Russia Stall Attempts to Ban Killer Robots

By Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS (IDN) — As the US withdrew the last of its troops from Afghanistan on August 31 following a deadly 20-year-old war, one of the messages coming out of Washington was clear: the US will curtail “boots on the ground” in all future conflicts—even though there are still more than 40,000 American troops stationed around the Middle East.

But the wave of the future may be 'killer robots'—mostly the deployment of drones or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)—in “shadow wars,” particularly against terrorist groups worldwide.

: Thalif Deen; UN INSIDER; 21 December 2021

Photo: Wing Loong II at Dubai Air Show 2017. CC BY-SA 4.0

The Pentagon’s 20-Year Killing Spree Has Always Treated Civilians as Expendable

Viewpoint by Norman Solomon

The writer is the national director of RootsAction.org and the author of many books including War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. He was a Bernie Sanders delegate from California to the 2016 and 2020 Democratic National Conventions. Solomon is the founder and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy.

: UN Bureau; OPINION; 21 December 2021

Photo: US President Biden met virtually with Chinese President Xi Jinping from the Roosevelt Room of the White House on 15 November 2021. Source: Los Angeles Times.

A New Cold War Between Russia and The West Is Unnecessary

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN) — George Orwell, the author of “Animal Farm”, the satire on how a dictatorship can slowly but steadily evolve in a democratic society, and “1984”, a novel about a future dystopian dictatorship, was the first person to use the phrase “Cold War” in a 1945 newspaper article, written just after the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.