International

A Nuclear Weapons Lab in New Mexico and a Nuclear Power Plant in Nebraska continue to show the on going safety issues and the consequent threats posed by these high risk technologies as these articles from Democracy Now show.

The call for Real Democracy Now led to campsites being formed in the largest squares of the largest cities of Spain with the name the “M-15 Movement” calling for a new democracy, political transparency and reform of the electoral law. Now the movement takes to the roads building a momentum of activism that will converge on Madrid on the 23rd of June.

In an historic vote, the state of New York, the third largest in the United States, legalised Gay Marriage last night joining Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont and Washington, D.C. The legislation comes into effect on the 24th of July with thousands of couples expected to take the opportunity to legalise their partnerships.

The second day at the Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum in Bonn and a continuously rising temperature. After the first panels on the opening day and exchanging cards with journalists from all over the world, the second day gave us vibrant meetings and high emotional intensity. Women were the protagonists.

Ednaldo Figueira, a blogger, politician and owner of the local newspaper O Serrano, was gunned down on 15 June in Serra do Mel, a town in the northeastern state of Rio Grande do Norte. He headed the Serra do Mel branch of the Workers Party (PT), the party of President Dilma Rousseff and her predecessor, Lula da Silva, and posted regularly on the Serra do Mel blog.

After six years of non-violent struggle against the Israeli separating wall by the people of Bil’in, the army has begun to dismantle a section of the West Bank Wall. In turn, the demonstrations continue to pressure for a new route which will not separate farmers from their land.

On Monday night Ireland suffered the most violent incidents in a decade between Protestants and Catholics, who clashed in the city of Belfast some even firing guns, according to Irish police. In the images broadcast by television there were hundreds of youths throwing stones and Molotov cocktails in the Short Strand area.

In a moment in which new forms of media and diffusion of news are challenging the old established forms and the news agenda of the day can be suddenly altered by a fragment of video taken on a mobile phone, the Global Media Forum convened today to consider the challenge for the Media in the field of Human Rights in a Globalized World.

Speaking at the 4th Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum in Bonn, Germany, this year focusing on the role of the media in the defense of human rights, Pia Figueroa, Director of Pressenza attacked multinational media corporation for their selective approach to defending human rights and spoke about the role of the media in attacks on human rights in Latin America.

On June 19th in Madrid, as in many other places, people gather to denounce and express their rejection of the many situations of economic violence they are being subjected to: the euro accord, cuts in health and education, corruption … The demonstration was cheerful and enthusiastic like all other multitudinous events of the 15M movement.