After causing a bit of a stir on Monday at the United Nations anti-racism conference in Geneva, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came home to what has been “officially described” as a warm welcome. On Monday Ahmadinejad was extremely critical of Israel and the creation of a “totally racist government in occupied Palestine.” In response, twenty-three EU delegates, including Britain, stood up and walked out of the conference room. The speech and the subsequent walkout has sparked a few people to speak up. Hassan Ghashghavi, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman, said, “Some western governments do not tolerate freedom of speech when it concerns Zionism.” Israel, who observed the annual Holocaust memorial day today, called the speech “shameful.” Al Jazeera’s Teheran correspondent added that the speech “[antagonized] his critics even further while forcing his supporters into a unified position.” With an election coming up Ahmadinejad may be looking to engage his base, but despite the ruffled feathers it was back to business as usual on Tuesday at the UN conference.
Taliban militants operating in Pakistan’s Swat region have reportedly expanded their operations into the nearby Buner Valley. The Taliban were supposed to have agreed to a peace deal with the Pakistani government and officials in the North West Frontier Province, offering to disarm in exchange for the implementation of Sharia law (Islamic law) in the Swat region. These talks, however, have halted recently. Sharia law has been installed in Buner, but at the behest of the people, not the Taliban, according to Mian Iftikhar Hussain, the information minister for North West Frontier Province. The peace deal was intended to facilitiate the implementation of Sharia law, giving the Taliban a reason to disarm. But the Taliban’s goals now seems to have expanded, Beyond permission for regular patrols of the Buner Valley and a ban on the playing of music in cars, full implementation of Sharia law across Pakistan is now the Taliban goal.
Jacob Zuma and his African National Congress (ANC) seem to be looking for less, as opposed to more, media coverage leading up to South Africa’s parliamentary elections. With Zuma’s latest defamation claim against UK’s Guardian newspaper for an article published in March as well as the mysterious South African Broadcasting Association (SABC) decision to pull a documentary on political satire apparently because of content “besmirching the [ANC] party,” it seems like ANC is going above and beyond to control negative media coverage. Jane Duncan, executive director of the Freedom of Expression Institute based in Johannesburg, says of the trend: “It is definitely emanating from the ruling party that has then trickled into the executive arm.” From the proposal of a media tribunal that would act as a content watchdog to the “ANC-proposed film and publication amendment bill” that was offered earlier this year, many think it’s becoming obvious that the ruling party also wants to rein in the press. From the perspective of the ANC, however, the media is in a dangerous state because of a lack of diversity in ownership and audience, and this is limiting to South African’s right to freedom and expression, not their media proposals.
An event happened last week whose controversial repercussions are still reverberating in Washington: President Obama greeted and shook the hand of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. It should be noted that Obama shook the hand of every leader at last weekend’s Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago, but only one seems to have “infuriated top Republicans in Washington.” In a photo of the encounter, both Obama and Chavez are smiling. Republican leaders like Newt Gingrich think this was the wrong way to greet a leader known for his anti-American rhetoric. “Everywhere in Latin America, enemies of America are going to use the picture… as proof that Chavez is now legitimate,” Gingrich explains. While he is not against Obama talking to Chavez, apparently Obama’s interaction should be in a “cold and distant way.” President Obama made it clear that he has no regrets about the hand shake: “It’s unlikely that as a consequence of me shaking hands or having a polite conversation with Mr. Chavez that we are endangering the strategic interest of the United States.”
Kazakhstan has refused to take part in NATO-led military exercises that are scheduled to take part in Georgia in May. Called Cooperative Longbow/Cooperative Lancer-2009, the command-and-staff exercise has been deemed “unhelpful” by Russia in light of the conflict between Georgia and Russia last summer. Explaining Kazakhstan’s decision was Prime Minister Danial Akhmetov: “We are too busy for this.” The exercise will not involve heavy weaponry but is expected to run from May 6 to June 1 in Georgia, involving up to 1,300 troops and 19 NATO ally states. In addition, the Georgian “breakaway” regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia may conduct their own military training in response to NATO’s activities.