by Robert Whitcomb | Jun 12, 2016 | Initiative
Law-enforcement officials do not yet know the full story of what led Omar Mateen, 29, to, murder 50 people and injure dozens more at a club in Orlando, Fla., on June 12. The shooter was a Florida resident, a U.S. citizen and the son of immigrants from Afghanistan. Authorities said that Mateen had apparently expressed his support for the Islamic State.
“It has been reported that Mateen made calls to 911 this morning in which he stated his allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State,” Ronald Hopper, the FBI’s assistant special agent in charge on the case, told the news media.
As of Sunday, however, U.S. officials cautioned that hat they had no conclusive evidence of any direct link with the Islamic State or any other foreign extremist group.
But the mass murder intensified calls for the rapid and total destruction of the Islamic State and raised pleas again that America make it more difficult for unstable, criminal and otherwise dangerous people to so easily obtain massive firepower with which to kill and maim.
The Boston Global Forum expresses its sadness and outrage about this barbarism and extends its condolences to the families of those murdered.
by Robert Whitcomb | Jun 15, 2016 | AI World Society Summit
L. Gordon Crovitz writes in The Wall Street Journal in a column headlined “The Battle Over Obama’s Internet Surrender”:
“It’s make or break for the Internet as we know it. Unless Congress acts this summer, the Obama administration will end U.S. protection of the Internet, handing authoritarian regimes the power they have long sought to censor the web globally, including in the U.S.
“The battle lines were drawn last week when the Obama administration backed a plan submitted by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or Icann, to free itself in September from the U.S. oversight that has kept the internet open since the 1990s. In response, bills were introduced in the Senate and House to block the Obama Internet surrender.’’
To read the entire column, please hit this link.
by Robert Whitcomb | Jun 12, 2016 | AI World Society Summit
(June 13th, 2016) German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on June 10 that implementing the Minsk Agreement to end the conflict between Russia and Ukraine would end sanctions imposed against Russia for its seizure of Crimea from Ukraine and its ongoing attacks on the latter nation’s east.
Mrs. Merkel also said that in the long term, the European Union should aim for a vast common economic zone with Russia extending from Russia’s Pacific coast to Portugal.
“We should move gradually towards this goal,” she said.
The Boston Global Forum last December named Chancellor Merkel a “World Leader for Peace, Security and Development’’.
Hit this link for more details.
by Robert Whitcomb | Jun 12, 2016 | World Leaders in AIWS Award Updates
(June 13th, 2016) In this paper, Carlos Alberto Torres, Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of California at Los Angeles, occupant of the UNESCO Chair in Global Learning and Global Citizenship Education at UCLA and a member of The Boston Global Forum’s (BGF) Board of Thinkers, discusses how global citizenship education can help foster global peace.
He explains the importance of developing a sense of belonging to a “Global Commons,’’ united by what he calls “Global Democratic Multicultural Citizenship,’’ which is in turn defined by what he calls “civic minimums’’ and “civic virtues.’’
The BGF has close ties to the UNESCO Chair in Global Learning and Global Citizenship Education. Indeed, Nguyen Anh Tuan, BGF co-founder and CEO, is chairman of the International Advisory Committee of the UNESCO program at UCLA.
To read Professor Torres’s article, please hit this link.
by Robert Whitcomb | Jun 12, 2016 | Event Updates
Do the actions of the G7 nations meeting at their May 26-27 summit in Japan suggest that Russian aggression against Ukraine and Chinese aggression in the South China Sea will not succeed in the long run because of pushback from the G7 industrialized democracies? Joshua W. Walker of the German Marshall Fund discusses this in The National Interest.
He concludes:
“The significance of this year’s G7 in Japan in advance of the G20 in China in September will be judged by which summit ultimately sets the tone for either the enduring nature of the liberal international order or sweeping tide of revisionist authoritarianism. Obama’s historic Hiroshima and Vietnam visits were symbolic of the legacy he hopes to leave. Yet, symbolism risks complacency without action. The G7’s latest initiative for global infrastructure development confirmed the member countries’ internationalist commitment but whether they can remain unified in the face of Chinese and Russian revisionist alternatives such as OBOR {One Belt, One Road} or the {Russiian-led} Eurasian Economic Union will have to be seen. As Japan passes the G7 baton to Italy next year, the world anxiously expects the world’s seven most advanced democracies and economies to lead toward the triumph of internationalism over revisionism.’’
To read the article, hit this link.
