By Thalif Deen UNITED NATIONS | 20 January 2025 (IDN) — As the annual World Economic Forum (WEF), described as a gathering of the world’s elite and super rich, meet in Davos, Switzerland, January 20-24, more than 30,000 activists across nearly 50 cities staged protests over the weekend demanding economic justice, climate action, and an […]
Aristotle Predicted Trump’s Inauguration
By James E. Jennings* ATLANTA, USA | 19 January 2025 (IDN) — The Athenian philosopher Aristotle predicted Donald Trump’s second inauguration on January 20, 2025 more than 2,300 years ago. How could he do that? It’s amazing but not very complicated. In Book V of Politics Aristotle wrote that democracies in their extreme form—a combination […]
Human Rights Watch Takes Stock of 2024: A Year of Reckoning
By Jan Servaes* BANGKOK, Thailand | 18 January 2025 (IDN) — The Human Rights Watch Report 2025 was recently launched in Bangkok under the title “2024: A Year of Reckoning”. The press conference, which can also be followed via YouTube, started with a video message from Tirana Hassan, HRW Director General, who tried to put […]
Rabbinical Cease Fire in Gaza: A New Oslo?
By James E. Jennings* ATLANTA, USA | 18 January 2025 (IDN) — The Israelis are very good at two things: bombing the hell out of places all over the Middle East using American planes and bombs and writing complicated “peace” deals that wrap the Palestinians in a morass of words so that peace never comes. […]
India Takes Yet Another Step Toward Sending Humans to the Moon
By Devinder Kumar* NEW DELHI | 17 January 2025 (IDN) — The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO)—which has been working on key technologies to realise its vision of setting up a space station by 2035 and sending humans to the Moon by 2040—on January 16 morning successfully demonstrated space docking, or the joining of two […]
WHO Appeals for USD 1.5 billion to Tackle Unprecedented Global Health Crisis
By Jaya Ramachandran GENEVA | 17 January 2025 (IDN) — The World Health Organization (WHO) has issued 2025 Health Emergency Appeal (HEA), calling for US$ 1.5 billion to support an unparalleled global health crisis, with 305 million people in urgent need of humanitarian assistance. Conflict, climate change, epidemics, and displacement have converged to create this […]
Combating Climate Change Strengthens Rather Than Stifles Economic Growth
By Dr. Alon Ben-Meir* NEW YORK | 16 January 2025 (IDN) — Climate change deniers, including President Trump, insist that there is no such thing as climate change and that measures taken to combat it only decrease economic productivity and stifle growth. In fact, the opposite is true; a plethora of scientific evidence suggests that […]
Sri Lanka: Better Manage the Water Tanks to Ensure Food Security
By Mohan Seneviratne* COLOMBO, Sri Lanka | 16 January 2025 (IDN) — Water is at the centre of economic and social development. It influences whether communities are healthy places to live, whether farmers can grow food and underpins natural ecosystems. Moreover, humans experience Climate Change through water be it floods, droughts, cyclones or tsunamis. Sri […]
Do Carbon Markets Foster New Scramble for African Land?
By Ramesh Jaura BERLIN | 15 January 2025 (IDN) — A new study has slammed the growth of carbon offset markets for fuelling a fresh scramble for African land and “perpetuating colonial-era exploitation”. This instrument of emissions trading was introduced by the Kyoto Protocol in 2005 to confront the unrelenting challenge to limit global warming […]
Myanmar Four Years After the Coup
By Jan Servaes BANGKOK | 15 January 2025 (IDN) — Almost four years after the February 1, 2021 coup in Myanmar, the military junta’s widespread and systematic abuses against the population—including arbitrary arrests, torture, extrajudicial killings and aerial bombardments of civilians—amount to crimes against humanity and war crimes. For ordinary citizens, the human rights situation […]