Eighteenth October Two Thousand Nine

Item 1: "A Fair Plan for Honduras" by James A. Baker III

- free elections supported by the U.S. Congress and the Bush administration, and by both sides of our polity, helped end a destructive civil conflict in Nicaragua
- The solution? Stop looking backward. Forget about who might be most at fault. Look forward.
- Non-interference in the domestic affairs of a sovereign country is a cardinal principle of the U.N. Charter
- As part of a negotiated settlement, all sides should agree that there will be no criminal charges filed against Zelaya or against those who may have illegally deported him


Item 2: "Pakistan, the Privatised State" by Faisal Devji
- religious forms of protest and even militancy were widely held to pose only a local and certainly not an existential threat for Pakistan
- Controlled by the army, the state has no independent existence - The army in its turn is a corporation
- Pakistan's army is not a national institution, being drawn mostly from a few districts in the Punjab and North-West Frontier Province


Item 3: "Feminism's Freedom Fighter" by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
- I refuse to (distinguish between mainstream and radical Islam)because one gives birth to the other. You are born into mainstream Islam. You are taught: Do not question the prophet; everything in the Koran is true. And then the radicals come and they expand on that, they build on that. So it is up to so-called mainstream Islam to tackle the radical element. [Mainstream Muslims] have to question the infallibility of the prophet Muhammad. They have to quit teaching children and young people that everything in the Koran is true and has to be taken seriously.
- The United States is not a welfare state. American Muslims have to have a job. European [nations] are welfare states so you have a lot of poor people who depend on the state for their survival. That makes it very attractive for radicals.
- Did God create man, or did man create God? I belong to the group who say man created God.


Item 4: "The End of RI’s Democracy or a Rebirth of Pluralism?" by Ahmad Junaidi
- coalition between Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s Democratic Party and Megawati Soekarnoputri’s Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) and Golkar would kill the country’s young democracy
- endorsement of the anti-pornography law and sharia-inspired bylaws in regions, including the recent stoning bylaw for adulterers in Aceh, highlighted the government’s failure to maintain pluralism
- burning and closing down of churches and mosques belonging to the Ahmadiyah Islamic sect are evidence of the failure of the state to protect its minorities
- sharia-inspired laws were suggested mostly by lawmakers from Golkar, not the Islamist Prosperous Justice Party (PKS)

Item 5: "World Without Hunger" by Hillary Rodham Clinton
- "food security" -- empowering the world's farmers to sow and harvest plentiful crops, effectively care for livestock or catch fish
- Since 2007, there have been riots over food in more than 60 countries
- Farming is the only or primary source of income for more than three-quarters of the world's poor
- food security initiative will be guided by five principles:
i. no one-size-fits-all model for agriculture
ii. address the underlying causes of hunger by investing in everything from better seeds to risk-sharing programmes to protect small farmers
iii. no one entity can eradicate hunger on its own
iv. multilateral institutions have the reach and resources that extend beyond any one country
v. long-term commitment and accountability - to prove it, we will invest in monitoring and evaluation tools


Item 6: "Bullish in China Shop" by N.D. Batra
- China is using its growing trade power to enhance its global influence
- In 2008, its foreign trade volume exceeded $2.56 trillion 70 times more than what it was 10 years ago
- China has now become the world's largest exporter, beating Germany
- it has been establishing listening posts, bunkering facilities at friendly ports and in some cases developing altogether new harbours to protect ocean routes and sea lanes
- China makes resource-rich countries offers so attractive that they just cannot refuse - long-term trade and development opportunities bundled in benign aid packages
- Diplomacy is the art of persuasion by all available means

Item 7: "No More Hot Air in Copenhagen" by Bjorn Lomborg
- immediate promises of carbon cuts do not work
- Copenhagen Consensus Centre commissioned research from top climate economists - expensive, global carbon taxes would be the worst option - focusing investment on research into climate engineering as a short-term response, and on non-carbon-based energy as a longer-term response
- marine cloud-whitening technology - Boats would spray seawater droplets into clouds above the oceans to make them reflect more sunlight back into space, reducing warming - a total of about $9 billion spent implementing marine cloud-whitening technology might be able to offset this entire century's global warming


Item 8: "This Massive INvasion will Benefit the Continent" by Ian Birrell
- China's scramble for Africa, arguably the most important geo-political change since the fall of the Berlin wall
- the 53 nations in Africa comprise more than a quarter of the UN General Assembly
- Cheap Chinese goods are stifling African markets - And many Chinese companies win contracts by paying low wages, bribing officials and ignoring environmental concerns. Some deals insist that the majority of work goes to Chinese companies or that a majority of the workforce is Chinese, hindering development and angering residents who see much-needed jobs go to immigrants
- Resentment is growing to such an extent in some areas that politicians have campaigned on anti-Chinese sentiment.
- "I would prefer the Western world to invest in Africa rather than handing out development aid." - Paul Kagame

Item 9: "The Dark Side of India's Medical Tourism" by Jason Overdorf
- 2 million children under 5 die every year in India - one every 15 seconds - the highest number anywhere in the world
- medical tourism has a dark side - encouraged wealthy and influential Indians to forget about the crumbling and overburdened government-run health system, because they now believe they have access to the world's best care from private hospitals
- Forty percent of the primary health centers are understaffed; India has fewer than one hospital bed per 1,000 people, compared with a world average of nearly four


Item 10: "Obama's Nuclear Agenda" by Joseph Nye
- Iranian officials met in Geneva with representatives of the permanent members of the UN Security Council (plus Germany) and agreed to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to inspect the hitherto secret plant
- United States and Russia, whose stockpiles contain more than 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons, are negotiating in Geneva to produce a new strategic arms reduction treaty to replace their START I arms-control agreement
- When the NPT entered into force in 1970, it was intended to limit the number of nuclear-weapons states to five (the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, France, and China) - three states that never signed the treaty have acquired nuclear weapons (India, Israel, and Pakistan)


Item 11: "Asia's Regionalism Block" by Michael Auslin
- Efforts at integration often fail because they overlook the role of the U.S.
- Mr. Hatoyama has called for an "Asean Plus Six" approach that would include the 10 countries of the Association of Southeast Asian nations as well as Japan, China, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand
- region's nations must take care not to forget that the U.S. system of alliances undergirds stability in Asia and is central to lubricating political engagement among countries large and small