Italy has finally blinked. Afer two generations of delay, the first of three pieces of a third-century Ethiopian obelisk plundered by the Italian fascist occupation in the 1930s has touched ground in the ancient city of Axum, where it was… Read moreItaly blinks in obelisk controversy
Unfortunately, the recent victory for indigenous land rights in Brazil may be followed by a rollback of recent gains for indigenous peoples in Botswana–where the world is paying even less attention. Reads an April 18 alert from Survival International: Botswana’s… Read moreBotswana: indigenous rights under attack
Hopes for a moderately progressive pontiff who could loosen up the Chuch line on the supposed evils of condoms in the age of AIDS–or even an African or Latin American one who could help Catholicism rally against the aggressive inroads… Read morePope Benedict XVI: The empire strikes back
Globophobe activists protested the annual meeting of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in Washington DC this weekend, tho BBC reports that they numbered in the hundreds rather than the thousands–a testament to how dissent has been sidetracked and… Read moreWorld Bank/IMF protests in DC
From the Washington Post, April 14: A detainee at a U.S. military prison alleges that U.S. military guards jumped on his head until he had a stroke that paralyzed his face, nearly drowned him in a toilet and later broke… Read moreGitmo prisoner sues to get torture video
The business-continuity newsletter Continuity Central and the ecologist EarthTimes.org are among the few media outlets to take note that the long-awaited study of why the World Trade Center collapsed has been released by the National Institute of Standards and Technology…. Read moreNIST releases WTC collapse study
Italy has once again retreated from a repeated pledge to return to Ethiopia a third-century 75-foot obelisk from the ancient city of Axum which fascist dictator Benito Mussolini brought to Rome as a prize of conquest after his invasion and… Read moreItaly plays politics with Ethiopian obelisk
From the AP, April 14: Reluctance by Italian investigators to accept the U.S. version of the killing of an Italian security agent [Nicola Calipari] by American troops in Iraq last month is holding up the conclusion of a joint inquiry… Read moreItaly: cover-up in Calipari affair?
Following the conviction of Kamel Bourgass, an Algerian immigrant who had been denied an asylum plea, of plotting ricin attacks in London, Britain’s Labor government is under attack for supposedly lax immigration policies. The Tory opposition is charging that Bourgass… Read moreFear in London–and Newark
There is a sleazy underside to what is being protrayed as an important step towards peace in Asia. Visiting New Delhi, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao signed an agreement with India to resolve border disputes dating to the Sino-Indian war of… Read moreTibet betrayed in China-India border deal
"Crouching Tiger, Swimming Dragon," an op-ed in the April 11 NY Times by Nayan Chanda, former editor of Far Eastern Economic Review, notes with alarm that Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao last week signed a deal in Islamabad for construction… Read moreSinophobia in the Indian Ocean—and NY Times
Synchronicity? Just days after WW4 REPORT cited a rare news report on persecution of the Yazidis (also rendered Yezidis or Ezidis), an obscure and ancient religious sect in eastern Turkey and northern Iraq, the Washington Post actually runs a story… Read moreYazidis in the news
