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"Why didn’t you mention that Suez is run by the Montreal-based Power Corporation through Pargesa--Saddam’s and the Ba’ath Party investment bank in Geneva, when you wrote about thirsty children in the shantytown of Alexandra, Africa?" colleague David Hawkins wanted to know after reading last week’s Canada Free Press cover story, Johannesburg then and now. Hawkins, Foundation Scholar-Cambridge University and founder of the Citizens Association of Forensic Economists at Hawk’s CAFÉ, misses nothing when it comes to forensic research. Johannesburg then and now recounted the tragedy of the desperate youngsters from nearby shantytowns who lined up for water at standpipes as...

Just as desperate kids in nearby shantytowns lined up for water at standpipes as Earth Summit delegates converged upon Johannesburg in 2002, H20 is still a scarce commodity in the region. According to the London Sun, 80,000 bottles of mineral water quenched the thirst of 60,000 delegates to the Johannesburg Earth Summit on Sustainability. While the delegates from 182 countries have long since gone home, the children of Alexandra, a shantytown just down the road from the wealthy Johannesburg suburb of Sandton, still go thirsty. Chronicled in the Corporate Watch video, White Gold, Alexandra is "a settlement of largely self-built...

Mandela announces son died of AIDS 01-06-2005, 14h06 Nicolas Asfouri - (AFP/Pool/File) JOHANNESBURG (AFP) - Former South African president Nelson Mandela said Thursday that his son Makgatho had died of AIDS. "We have called you today to announce that my son has died of AIDS," Mandela told reporters gathered Thursday at his Johannesburg home just hours after his only surviving son passed away. Makgatho Mandela, 54, had been in intensive care for the past weeks, but no details were released about his condition.

The U.S. is engaged in a bloody war in Iraq for the purpose of eliminating the remnants of a terrorist regime, foreign terrorists, and bringing democracy to Iraq and the region. It is a big gamble that has put radical Islam on the defensive around the world. But shocking evidence demonstrates that controversial former U.S. Marine and former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter, who now writes for the anti-American Arab "news" organization Al Jazeera, was involved in a controversial effort to stop the war by enlisting prominent personalities in a "peace" campaign.

The security alerts in the US and the UK have also reverberated in South Africa because Pakistani police have raised the possibility that al-Qaida supporters were planning terrorist attacks in Pretoria and Johannesburg. Two South Africans of Asian descent were arrested during the 12-hour gun battle with Pakistani police in the eastern city of Gujrat that led to the capture of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian wanted for the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Gujrat's police chief, Raja Munawar Hussainl, alleged yesterday that the two South Africans - Zoubair Ismail, 20, an Islamic student, and...

Johannesbnurg - The government was urged on Tuesday to help two South Africans being detained in Pakistan on suspicion of being recruits of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network. A Pakistani official said Abu Bakar and Zubair Ismail had told interrogators they had planned to attack tourist sites in Johannesburg. Last week, the foreign affairs ministry named the two men as Feroze Ganchi, a medical doctor from Fordsburg, Johannesburg, and 20-year-old student Zubair Ismail, from Laudium, Pretoria. The Media Review Network, an advocacy group which aims to dispel myths and stereotypes about Islam, urged the government and human rights organisations to...

HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe has seized a U.S.-registered cargo plane with 64 suspected mercenaries of various nationalities and a cargo of "military material", Home Affairs (Interior) Minister Kembo Mohadi said on Monday. "A United States of America-registered Boeing 727-100 cargo plane was detained last night at about 19:30 hours at Harare International Airport after its owners had made a false declaration of its cargo and crew," Mohadi said in a statement.

Anyone who believes that Israeli-Palestinian relations can be compared to the South Africa's former apartheid system is making a false comparison, a South African legislator said in Jerusalem this week. Dr. Kenneth Meshoe, a black South African parliament member and leader of the fastest growing political party, the African Christian Democratic Party, said he sees no evidence of apartheid in Israel. "If anybody says to you that there's apartheid in Israel, tell them that the man that was oppressed under apartheid from South Africa says that's a big lie," said Meshoe. "Apartheid was based on the color of our skin,"...

Hi all, I'm taking Environmental Science and, naturally, the teacher is a strong leftist. Today she told us that "President Bush didn't attend the Johannesburg Summit [on global environmental issues] and sent Colin Powell instead. These are things you should consider when you vote." I'm looking for articles or op-eds that rationalize Bush's non-attendance or reveal some of the anti-Americanism that was present at the meeting. Thank you in advance for all info. -sdk

<p>WASHINGTON - From Aug. 26 through Sept. 4, over 4,000 official delegates, some 3,000 activists from non-government organizations and heads of state from 100 countries have met at the U.N. Sustainable Development Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa. The conference was billed as the largest event the United Nations has ever staged, meant to tackle the largest problem the modern world has ever faced: economic development. Yet the entire venture can be summed up in one word: redistribution.</p>

<p>JOHANNESBURG, South Africa A surprising story dominated the U.N. sustainable development summit in South Africa. Unlike other huge environmental meetings, Johannesburg has become suffused with the theme that wealth makes health - or, more specifically, that it is economic growth that leads to a cleaner, safer environment.</p>

US Committed to Development, says Powell Amid Boos at Johannesburg Summit Colin Powell U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell has told the World Summit on Sustainable Development that the United States is committed to development. But not all the delegates welcomed Mr. Powell's remarks. Mr. Powell was repeatedly interrupted by boos and heckling from a generally hostile crowd, especially when he spoke about the sensitive issues of climate change, energy policy, and genetically modified food. Heckler is removed from conference by security guards "The United States is taking action to meet environmental challenges, including global climate change. We are committed-...

<p>At the World Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, where it's apparently great sport even for Americans to take whacks at the United States and its supposed neglect of underdeveloped countries, U.S. representatives have finally started fighting back.</p> <p>They have pointed out, for instance, that the United States gives more money to poor countries than any other nation and, even more important, imports more goods from them, The Associated Press says.</p>

JOHANNESBURG, Aug. 19 A South African teenager who made headlines after saying he had been kidnapped from white parents and raised as a herd boy in a black rural township was never part of a white family, a court ruled today. The Bronkhorstspruit magistrate's court did say that the teenager, Happy Sindane, may have had a white father, according to report by the South African Broadcasting Corporation. The teenager, who is light-haired and pale-skinned, turned up at a police station on May 19.

It was trade and transnational corporations versus the environment at the recent Rio Plus Ten World Summit on Sustainable Development here, and the green groups, complain their supporters, came out on the short end of the stick. When the world gathered in Johannesburg a few weeks ago for the conference, the world's major environmentalist groups and NGOs (non-governmental organizations) believed they would make major gains in their respective agendas. However, now that the dust has settled, it would appear that the world's most powerful corporations have cemented their agenda of promoting trade, while the concerns of environmentalists – both radical...

Corinne Thatcher is a junior majoring in Latin American studies and a Collegian columnist. Her e-mail address is cet131@psu.edu. It seems as if President Bush has found a new cause to distract television viewers from the heated political commentary that has besieged the issue of Iraq. In a speech Tuesday, Dubya spoke with incredulity about the lack of knowledge U.S. students have about their nation's history. He expressed amazement, for example, at the fact that the average student doesn't know that James Madison was instrumental in drafting the U.S. Constitution -- though I cannot help but wonder whether he...

At the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa, some 60,000 delegates from around the globe met together to solve the problems of poor nations. While they were pondering what to do about world hunger, they made sure that they themselves would not go hungry. The chef of the five-star Michelangelo Hotel, where the VIPs stayed, told Neil Syson of the British tabloid The Sun how he had stocked 1,000 pounds of lobster, 5,000 oysters, more than two tons of steak, 450 pounds of salmon, and half a ton of bacon and sausages. Not to mention thousands of...

There was a great scene last month - great for Canada - at the UN World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg. There was our prime minister, being wildly cheered by all those Third World delegates, mostly from African nations. Was Jean Chretien afraid of the Americans? He was not. His country was right under their noses. That didn't matter. He would defy them. He would sign the Kyoto treaty on greenhouse gas emissions before the year was out - with or without the consent of the province that would almost singly have to bear the effect of what he...

CLEAN WATER, CLEAN air and the alleviation of poverty were among the goals discussed at the 2002 Johannesburg Summit, held from August 26 to September 4. They sound like worthwhile endeavors. Who would argue that a decrease in air and water pollution and an increase in the per-capita wealth of the poor aren’t laudable goals? Unfortunately, the majority of the attendees at Johannesburg Climate Legacy 2002 were ill suited for implementing their own agenda. They are simply nut cases, whose ideas are so far-fetched most of them should be ignored. Carbon dioxide emissions and global warming were on everybody’s agenda....

Thankfully, the fiasco in Johannesburg is over. President Bush was right to stay home. He was also right to send determined delegates with firm instructions to thwart the ambitions of the radically green global-governance crowd. To some extent, the U.S. delegation was successful. The green crowd insisted on language in the final document that would commit the world to produce 15 percent of its energy from "alternative" sources – specifically wind, solar and small dams – by a time certain. They didn't get it. The final document language calls for nations to act "with a sense of urgency" to increase...