(source: IPS South Africa)

Almost 80 million smallholder farmers in Africa, supply about 80 percent of its food. In order for Africa to establish a prosperous and sustainable economic future, the voices of its farmers must be amplified.
 
To enable this, journalists from across the West Africa region attended a media workshop in Accra, Ghana, hosted by Inter Press Service IPS Africa (www.ipsnews.net/africa) on behalf of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (www.ifad.org) .

ABOVE: Terna Gyuse (left), IPS Africa regional Editor introducing guest speaker Mohamed Beavogui, IFAD Director for West and Central Africa region, to participants at the media training workshop.

The workshop aimed to build the capacity of local journalists and editors from West and Central Africa to gain the skills and knowledge they need to report on the food crisis and how it can be solved, particularly with the contribution of smallholder farmers.

(source: RedBedHead) 

Israel likes to portray itself as the Middle East's only democracy; a bastion of (western) civilization in a sea of (oriental) despotism. That picture has always been false, of course, as soon as you include the Palestinians who were ethnically cleansed and who now are subject to Israeli rule in the Occupied Territories but who have zero civil rights in Israel. It's not for nothing that Israel is compared with South Africa's racist apartheid system.

But Israel's disrespect for basic democratic rights is even more pervasive than this. Just ask the Bedouin in the Negev desert, who have never had their right to their pastoral lands recognized, though they have lived there for hundreds of years prior to the founding of Israel. Most of them must live in tin shacks or tents because Israel destroys any more permanent buildings.

By Ghulam Muhammed

As it is, to judge the pulse of the people is a hazardous venture, even with all the high degree of sophistication sold to the gullible by the discredited polling peddlers, the state of editorial confusion in the writers of Mumbai’s two main opinion maker English media, The Times of India and The Indian Express, shows how media uses its power in questionable arbitrary manner, when it comes to Muslim mind. The anniversary of December 6, which is marked by Indian Muslim all over the country as a Black Day; a day when India’s most celebrated secular Constitution was systematically subverted by the two main political parties, joining hands in collusion to demolish the 400 year old historic Babri Masjid at Ayodhya.

By Linda Gradstein

(source: www.sphere.com)

East Jerusalem, at the crux of the conflict between Jews and Palestinians for more than 40 years, is more contested than ever this week in light of several reports that suggest Israel is pursuing a deliberate policy of "judaizing" the city Palestinians view as their future capital.

A classified European Union report, leaked to the Israeli daily Ha'aretz, slams Israeli policy in East Jerusalem and calls on EU countries to help strengthen Palestinian claims to the city. The Israeli government is particularly concerned at indications that the EU may soon officially recognize East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state.

In addition, an Israeli human rights group says Israel is stripping more and more Palestinians of their Jerusalem residency permits. On Monday, Palestinians and Jews clashed after an Israeli court ruled that the Palestinian family living in a house had no right to occupy an addition they had built onto the house and that settlers could move in.

(source: michaelmoore.com)

Dear President Obama,

Do you really want to be the new "war president"? If you go to West Point tomorrow night (Tuesday, 8pm) and announce that you are increasing, rather than withdrawing, the troops in Afghanistan, you are the new war president. Pure and simple. And with that you will do the worst possible thing you could do -- destroy the hopes and dreams so many millions have placed in you. With just one speech tomorrow night you will turn a multitude of young people who were the backbone of your campaign into disillusioned cynics. You will teach them what they've always heard is true -- that all politicians are alike. I simply can't believe you're about to do what they say you are going to do. Please say it isn't so.