North America

Pakistan is standing like a rock in the surf resisting growing international pressure to endorse a global treaty that would ban production of fissile material used as fuel for nuclear weapons. Reiterating its adamant opposition, Pakistan has warned that it would boycott any process to negotiate a U.S.-backed treaty outside the deadlocked UN Conference on Disarmament (CD).

The so-called international community must be either bored or out of this planet. Otherwise it would not have wasted years and years in expensive meetings and lengthy discussions before ending up, twelve months ago, with an indisputable and undisputed finding—that safe water and sanitation is a ‘human right’!

Yesterday’s discovery of the body of Yolanda Ordaz de la Cruz, a crime reporter and columnist for the regional daily Notiver in the east-coast port city of Veracruz, adds her name to the long list of journalists who have been murdered or have disappeared in Mexico. A total of 77 have been killed since 2000 and 23 have gone missing since 2003.

House Speaker John Boehner has delayed a vote on his debt-ceiling plan after failing to gather enough Republican support. Boehner pulled his measure late Thursday night after it became clear hard-line Republicans refused to abandon their demands for even deeper budget cuts. The bill would slash government spending by $917 billion over the next decade.

Hundreds of gay couples got married across New York state Sunday after it became the sixth and most populous state in the United States to recognize same-sex marriages. New York joins Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont and the District of Columbia in allowing same-sex unions. But gay marriage is still specifically banned in 39 states.

GOP Cries Wolf on Debt Ceiling in Order to Impose Radical Pro-Rich Agenda

President Obama and Republican House Speaker John Boehner are allegedly close to a $3 trillion deficit-reduction package as part of a deal to raise the federal debt ceiling before an August 2 deadline. But the deal is coming under fire from both congressional Democrats and Republicans.

Brushing off protests from China, Barack Obama welcomed the Dalai Lama to the White House, urging respect for human rights and cultural traditions in Tibet. China immediately lodged a protest and accused Obama of undermining relations between the world’s two largest economies by meeting with the Tibetan spiritual leader, who has spent more than a half-century in exile.

Despite attempts by Chinese authorities to suppress any form of social change, young Chinese people both in and out of the country are constantly finding new ways to be heard. In 2010 alone there were 320,000 incidents of civil unrest. A move is underway to unite the diverse protests and rebrand them the “Jasmine Revolution”, following in the footsteps of Tunisia.

I’m sure you have heard this comment many times, “I’m not voting because I don’t believe that my vote is changing anything”. Even though I understand where this thinking| comes from, it doesn’t work like that. The democratic system has a particular way of working, just like any other system. This is not a question of belief and it is not about liking something either.

Peace activists won a major victory on Monday, June 20, when the US Conference of Mayors voted to adopt two resolutions that call for a drawdown of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and the abolition of nuclear weapons. Both resolutions also demand the reprioritization of defense spending, including the $126 billion spent each year in Iraq and Afghanistan.