Salon.com > Spiegel staff

From Guant

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 13:11:00 +0000

The tiny Pacific island nation of Palau has stepped in to help in the tricky question of where 17 Guantánamo inmates of Uighur origin are to go when the camp closes.

In a statement released to the Associated Press on Wednesday, Palau President Johnson Toribiong said his country would be "honored and proud" to take the detainees as a "humanitarian gesture." Palau, he said, had "agreed to accommodate the United States of America's request" to "temporarily resettle" the detainees, "subject to periodic review."

Toribiong said he had discussed the issue with Daniel Fried, the U.S. diplomat who has been charged with the effort to resettle Guantánamo detainees, during his recent visit to Palau. Representatives of the Palau government will travel to Guantánamo to make preparations for the transfer of the inmates, Toribiong said.

With a population of around 20,800, Palau is one of the world's least-populated countries. It was a U.S. trust territory until it gained independence in 1994 and still maintains close ties to the U.S., as well as relying significantly on American aid.

“We are seeing a catastrophe”

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 10:20:00 +0000

In its annual report released on Thursday, Amnesty International scolds China and the United States for human rights violations. In this interview, originally published on Spiegel Online, A.I. head Irene Khan warns that the global economic crisis is leading Western governments to put the push for universal human rights on the back burner.

The past year has been totally dominated by the global recession. That's even reflected in your annual report. How has it affected the human rights situation around the world?

We are seeing a catastrophe. After years of going down, the number of people in poverty is growing again. We saw social uprisings across Africa and China -- and very harsh repression by governments that left many protesters dead. Food shortages allowed several governments, among others Zimbabwe and North Korea, to use food as a political weapon.

Could that have been prevented?

Leading governments have been distracted by the recession. Humanitarian crises, like in Darfur and Palestine, do not get the attention they deserve. The poorest are hardest hit by the economic crisis, but all the thought and investment goes to shore up the economy and the banking system in the West. Human rights are put on a back burner.

“I was horrified by the lengths men will go to mistreat other men”

Sat, 30 May 2009 10:30:00 +0000

Barack Obama's great-uncle was one of the soldiers who liberated a subcamp of Buchenwald. A few days before the U.S. president's planned stopover in Germany, where he is expected to visit the concentration camp memorial, here is an interview with Charles Payne, 84, about his experiences in WWII.

Mr. Payne, early in June your great-nephew, President Barack Obama, will visit the former concentration camp Buchenwald, which you helped liberate at the end of the war. Will he be traveling in your footsteps?

I don't buy that. I was quite surprised when the whole thing came up and Barack talked about my war experiences in Nazi Germany. We had never talked about that before. This is a trip that he chose, not because of me I'm sure, but for political reasons.

What do you think could be his motives for this trip?

First, I think he already had this trip in mind -- with Cairo on the one end and Normandy at the other, and time for Germany in between. Second, perhaps his visit also has something to do with improving his standing with Angela Merkel. She gave him a hard time during his campaign and also afterwards.

Where will we put our beers?

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 10:24:00 +0000

Flickr/rick

For most of us, beer coasters are just an insignificant piece of cardboard tucked under our glass of ale. But some have elevated the disposable coaster, which is a common sight in pubs in Europe and North America, to a lofty status, considering it an artwork, a collector's item, building material -- or even a piece of sporting equipment.

The record for beer-coaster throwing stands at 125.5 feet, while the highest beer-coaster tower, created from more than 40,000 coasters, stood proud at 9.70 meters. Leo Pisker, an Austrian, has an extensive collection of some 150,000 beer coasters from around the world.

But now the economic crisis is threatening the beer coaster -- and unnerving its fans. The world's biggest beer coaster company, Katz Group, has declared itself bankrupt. Tucked away in Weisenbach in the Southwest of Germany, Katz Group, which was founded as a sawmill in 1716, had been in the beer coaster business since 1903. Katz International Coasters controlled around two-thirds of the European market and 97 percent of the U.S. market.

Joseph Stiglitz: “It’s going to be bad, very bad”

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 10:25:00 +0000

Many people are comparing the financial crisis to the Great Depression. Will it really be that bad?

It's going to be bad, very bad. We're experiencing the worst downturn since the Great Depression, and we haven't reached the bottom yet. I'm very pessimistic. Governments are indeed reacting better today than during the global economic crisis. They're lowering interest rates and boosting the economy with economic stimulus plans. This is the right direction, but it's not enough.

The American government has committed over a trillion dollars to save the banks and $789 billion to boost the economy. Do you think this is too little?

I do. More than $700 billion sounds like a lot, but it's not. On the one hand, a large part of the money will first be given out next year, which is too late. On the other, a third of it is drained away by tax cuts. They don't really stimulate consumption, because people will save the majority of that money. I fear that the effect of the American economic stimulus plan won't be even half as big as expected.

At least governments worldwide are bracing themselves against the recession, as opposed to the global economic crisis where they accelerated the recession through their savings policy.

Explosions heard as chaos continues in India

Thu, 27 Nov 2008 18:39:00 +0000

Explosions were heard even after a hostage standoff ended at Mumbai's Taj Mahal Palace hotel on Thursday, and another hotel was still under siege as the city reeled from a coordinated terrorist assault that has killed 101 people and injured over 300.

Police were searching the Taj Mahal Palace room by room at about 10:30 on Thursday morning, according to the BBC, but by 11:15 witnesses reported hearing new explosions from inside the hotel, which was already burning from a suspected grenade explosion on Wednesday night. Other witnesses reported explosions at the Trident/Oberoi Hotel and the Nariman House, a Jewish center in Mumbai. All three buildings -- targets of a terrorist assault on Mumbai on Wednesday -- had been entered by Indian military commandos, according to Indian media.

Islamist gunmen had arrived by boats and invaded at least 10 "soft targets" on Wednesday evening, including the Jewish center, the two hotels, the landmark Café Leopold, hospitals and a railway station, where they sprayed commuters at random with bullets. Hostage standoffs at the Taj Mahal and Trident/Oberoi led -- even hours later -- to gun skirmishes with police and, at the Taj Mahal, images of a fire.

Blackwater vs. Blackbeard off the coast of Africa

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 11:52:00 +0000

The most important things in life are simple, at least in the world of Erik Prince. A square-jawed American with closely cropped hair, Prince served as an elite soldier in the U.S. Marines in Bosnia, Haiti and the Middle East. Given his experience, he believes that it will be relatively easy for him to distinguish between good and evil on the new battlefield, the high seas.

"If a couple of guys are sitting in a six-meter (20-foot) fishing boat, in the middle of the Gulf of Aden, and if they've got bazookas in their hands, they're clearly not out there for the fishing," says Prince, 39, the CEO of Blackwater Worldwide, the world's largest and most infamous private security firm. "You have a pretty good idea of what they're up to."