Culture

Doubts Assail NATO in Afghanistan and Beyond

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NATO commanders insist that their mission in Afghanistan is one of reconstruction, but that combat is an inevitable byproduct. Now, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is under pressure from its Afghan hosts to reduce mounting civilian deaths, even as member nations such as Canada face renewed pressure to withdraw completely. Italy’s ADNKronos says a NATO bombing run gone awry killed nine Pakistani civilians on the Afghan border, including three women and four children — prompting the suicide of the 70-year-old patriarch of the family. The Associated Press reports that U.S. commanders don’t feel any procedural changes in military operations are required, however, asserting that current measures help “minimize” the civilian toll. A Pentagon spokesman also vehemently denied that NATO troops are killing more civilians than the Islamist militants they are fighting.

Culture

Polygamy Bans Proliferate Everywhere But …

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Utah reckons it’s home to thousands of polygamists, all following their interpretation of Mormon religious teachings, but in contravention of current Mormon practices — and the law. So, while governments in Uganda and Iraqi Kurdistan debate banning polygamous marriages altogether to protect women from abuse and exploitation, “fundamentalist” Mormons in the American Southwest are seeking the reverse: the decriminalization of the practice, which they say is voluntary, not forced. In fact, Reuters reports that this push for decriminalization also includes provisions to stamp out forced marriages and underage brides. In Iraq, Kurdish women groups are mostly lineup up against polygamy, which was legal for most of the nation throughout the Hussein era, and is supported by men and women there to this day. Based on Islamic-derived law, Iraqi men can have up to four wives, but must prove to a judge that they can support all of them, and that the women will be treated equally.

Culture

Trade Bolsters Myanmar Junta

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Another birthday of imprisoned dissident Daw Aung Sung Suu Kyi has come and gone, and the plight of Burma slips again to the back burners of the highest-profile international press. But dig into local and regional media, and you’ll find a wealth of coverage of the repressive junta that took control of Burma and renamed it Myanmar in 1989. More than a million refugees have fled the country since the coup, many to India and Bangladesh, where dissidents publish newspapers and Web sites about their homeland. Inter Press Service reports that forced labor on a mass scale persists despite agreements with the International Labor Organization to monitor and register complaints directly within the country. The agreements have fallen by the wayside since an internal coup replaced the ruling military faction with another, less accommodating group.

Culture

The Promises and Pitfalls of Darfur’s Salvation

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An international charity is pulling out even as Sudan grudgingly accepts a bolstered peacekeeping force in the Darfur region, home to mounting ethic violence and fears of genocide. The new peacekeeping force comes too late for Oxfam, which has decided to permanently close its operations in on Darfur town over Sudan’s “reluctance” to protect aid workers against roving militias. The United States said the biggest challenge is for Sudan to move beyond good words and fully implement the peacekeeping plan. But the Guardian reports that a failure by the U.S. to deliver as much as $1 billion in support to the peacekeepers may doom such efforts. In the United Kingdom, major investors in Sudanese petroleum, including Barclay’s and the Church of England, are subjects of a new divestment campaign which says oil profits are used to support the murderous Janjaweed militias at the heart of Darfur’s strife.

Culture

Natural Resources Spur Pollution, Indigenous Rights Disputes

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From fossil fuels to “blue gold,” from uranium to offshore biodiversity, natural resources around the world promise riches but often deepen social and economic disputes. In Turkey, the massive new Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline is expected to bring $1 billion into the national economy. But residents of the fishing vilage of Golovasi, near the pipeline terminal on the Mediterranean Sea, say the pipeline has scared away the fish, and that the local economy is shutting down even as promises of financial aid fall through. In the United States, a spike in the value of uranium has renewed interest in abandoned uranium mines throughout the West. The Christian Science Monitor reports that a leap in prices, from $10 to almost $140 per pound, has inspired a surge in mining land claims — 32,000 of them in 2006 alone.

Culture

Homophobia, as a Policy, Gets Personal

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Intolerance of gays and lesbians worldwide seems to be digging in, as the public and private lives of homosexuals come under fire from Oregon to Russia and South-Central Asia. In Portland, two teenage girls who hugged and kissed on a bus were forced off the vehicle after a passenger complained to the driver. The city transit agency says it’s against policy to eject young people from a bus; the girls’ parents may file their own complaint about the incident. In Russia, Orthodox Christian groups plan on holding prayer meetings and patrols in a popular meeting venue for Moscow gays and lesbians. This follows assaults on a gay rights demonstration in the Russian capital in which police let the perpetrators go and arrested the protestors instead.

Culture

The Slums: A Boom in Urban Poor Defies Solutions

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Experts predict that by 2030 two billion people will live in urban squatter and slum communities with no services, sanitation or running water. The growth of slums and economic disparaties are spurring poitical debate and legal crackdowns, even as new social movements emerge within the communities themselves. Forbes.com reports that today 80 percent of Nigerians — that’s more than 40 million people — live in slums, as do 158 million Indians, or 56 percent of the population. The Economic Times in India puts that sum closer to 70 million, accounting for 45 percent of Delhi’s population, and more than 50 percent of Mumbai’s. In an editorial, the newspaper says that the huge influx of rural poor to cities has changed voting patterns, which are now divided along economic rather than caste lines.

Culture

Carbon Trading Beset by Fraud and Doubt

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A new report finds the most common system for trading carbon emissions, which allows rich European countries to continue polluting while also investing in environmental projects in developing countries, has major flaws. The report finds that as many as a third of the “green” projects approved in India are actually regular commercial ventures, wrongly approved by fraudulent middlemen. Those concerns led British airline Easyjet to cut out the middleman entirely, buying U.N.-backed carbon credits on the open market and selling them directly to passengers. The Guardian reports that scientists have doubts about how effective carbon credits actually are. Widely-used carbon offset schemes, such as tree planting, may ironically increase global warming by trapping heat, the newspaper reports.

Culture

EGYPT: When is an Islamist Not an Islamist?

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Neither the United States nor Egypt are square on how to treat the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamic group with terrorist origins that also happens to be Egypt’s most powerful opposition party. The government of Hosni Mubarak arrested 87 party members in May and detained 52 more last week just ahead of the June 11 elections. New constitutional amendments give Egypt the power to ban any political activity based on religion, but the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch says it’s censoring free speech instead. This includes the repeated jailing and torture of Abd al-Menim Mahmoud, a young blogger for the Muslim Brotherhood. Harper’s editor Ken Silverstein argues that the party is misunderstood by both Egypt and the U.S.
The Brotherhood may be Islamic, but it “renounced violence decades ago and has pledged to support democracy,” he says.

Culture

Migrants Face Dangerous Waters and a Cold Shoulder

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If they survive the voyage, Africans fleeing to Europe on wooden boats do not always get a warm welcome. Malta took 25 shipwrecked Somalis ashore last week, but only after coming under fire late May when a Maltese fishing boat refused to rescue a another group of migrants, and left the task to Spain. A Maltese ship has since found 18 other bodies floating in the Mediterranean; while 233 migrants were brought ashore in the last week alone, the Times of Malta reports. In response to the surge, the European Union is boosting patrols off the coast of Africa to intercept migrant boats. Hundreds of protestors at an E.U. immigration summit in Greece called for a different solution that includes legalization and ending war and poverty in Africa.