By Xanthe Hall* | IDN-InDepth NewsViewpoint
BERLIN (IDN) – The latest acronym in the disarmament community is CHC. It stands for Catastrophic Humanitarian Consequences and is the message that the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear weapons (ICAN) is trying to get across, both to the general public and to governments. So far, so successfully.
By Lawrence Wittner* | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis
ALBANY (IDN) – In a major address in Prague on April 5, 2009, the newly-elected U.S. President, Barack Obama, proclaimed “clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.”
On January 24, 2013, however, Senator John Kerry, speaking at Senate confirmation hearings on his nomination to become U.S. secretary of state, declared that a nuclear weapons-free world was no more than “an aspiration,” adding that “we’ll be lucky if we get there in however many centuries.” Has there been a change in Obama administration policy over the past four years? There are certainly indications that this might be the case.
By Shastri Ramachandran* | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis
NEW DELHI (IDN) – The big-versus-small debate pervades all facets of our lives. Big may be better, but small is smarter. This seems to be the subtext of a recent “happiness survey” in the Indian daily Hindustan Times. The happiness index was based on whether people are happy with their health, wealth and sex lives.
The survey’s findings are important for what they state as much as for what they conceal. Small is not always beautiful or smart.
By Kalinga Seneviratne | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis
SINGAPORE (IDN) – A recent skirmish has highlighted a widely unnoticed fishing war that has been going on for two years in the Palk Straits, a stretch of sea about 30 km long, that separates India’s Tamil Nadu state from Sri Lanka’s northern province that was plagued by a civil war for over 30 years. The southern state of Tamil Nadu is often at daggers drawn with the central government in New Delhi.
By R. Nastranis and Kinda Mohamadieh*
IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis
GENEVA (IDN) – Uncertainty clouds the fate of the current round of global trade negotiations under the umbrella of the World Trade Organization (WTO), which commenced in November 2011 and have been stalled since July 2008. All eyes are now set on the ninth ministerial conference (MC9) to be held on the Indonesian island of Bali December 3-6, 2013.
The reason behind the impasse, according to Dr Rubens Ricupero, a former UNCTAD Secretary-General, is that the advanced economies are retracting on their promises given at the WTO’s Fourth Ministerial Conference in Doha, Qatar, in November 2001.
By Alyn Ware* | IDN-InDepth NewsViewpoint
NEW YORK (IDN | Pressenza) – A meteor blasting into the atmosphere over Siberia (on February 15), injuring about 1000 people with debris, provided a graphic warning of the risk of a larger meteor, or even an asteroid, hitting earth. About the same time that the 10 ton meteor entered the earth’s atmosphere, an asteroid 15,000 times larger whizzed past planet earth. If the asteroid instead of the meteor had hit us, it could have wiped out civilization just as an asteroid hitting the earth 65 million years ago created climatic consequences that wiped out the dinosaurs.
By Michael Felsen* | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis
BOSTON (IDN | CGNews) – Like so much else that touches on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a just-released three-year-long study of how textbooks on both sides portray the “other” has provoked a firestorm of controversy.
The fruit of a seed first planted in 2008 by a post-Annapolis Conference committee of Israelis and Palestinians dedicated to promoting education on tolerance, building a culture of peace, and preventing incitement, the study has succeeded in generating more heat than light, at least as far as the Israeli government is concerned. But a closer look suggests there is much to be learned – both from the study and from the responses to it.
By Richard Johnson | IDN-InDepth NewsReport
PARIS (IDN) – The French nuclear company Areva achieved a record uranium production of 9,760 tonness in 2012 – up from 9,142 tonnes the previous year – enabling the company to retain its place as the world’s second-largest corporate uranium producer. The world leader is Kazatomprom of Kazakhstan, with a 2012 production share of nearly 12,000 tonnes.
By Jamshed Baruah | IDN-InDepth NewsReport
BERLIN (IDN) – A new report by the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) has come to a worrisome conclusion that the United States and Russia continue to maintain large numbers of nuclear forces on high levels of alert, ready to launch within minutes, as if the Cold War – which is believed to have ended more than two decades ago – was going on unabated.
Together with France and Britain, the four countries deploy approximately 2000 warheads ready for use on short notice – more nuclear warheads than held by all the other states in possession of nuclear weapons combined, finds the report titled Reducing Alert Rates of Nuclear Weapons, co-authored by Hans M. Kristensen, Director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) and Matthew McKinzie from the Natural Resources of Defense Council.
By Ernest Corea* | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis
WASHINGTON DC (IDN) – Hostile and sometimes potentially humiliating treatment of some of President Barack Obama’s nominees or potential nominees for high office by opposing legislators provides a foretaste of what might lie ahead for legislation that will be formulated in line with the national agenda he outlined in his State of the Union Address on February 12.
His proposals cannot simply spring into life and become the law of the land without expert and empathetic management and implementation by senior officials, primarily members of his second term Cabinet that he is now in the process of putting together.
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