International issues

Syrian opposition figures and groups claiming that they represent most opposition movements to Bashar Al Assad dictatorial regime, have formed in Turkey a National Transition Council, chaired by Burhan Ghalioun, a Syrian-French academic teaching at the Sorbonne University in Paris.

In 1981, the United Nations General Assembly created an annual International Day of Peace to take place on the opening day of the regular sessions of the General Assembly. The purpose of the day is for “commemorating and strengthening the ideals of peace both within and among all nations and peoples.”

Considered one of the biggest slums in the world, Kibera is Nairobi’s–and East Africa’s–largest urban settlement. Over one million people struggle daily to meet basic needs such as access to water, nutrition and sanitation. In this community lacking education and opportunities, women and girls are most affected by poverty.

Reporters Without Borders is shocked by the murders of reporter Ana María Yarce Viveros, the founder of the weekly magazine Contralínea, and Rocio González Trápaga, a freelance journalist who used to work for Televisa. The bodies of two women were found in a Mexico City park yesterday.

There is so much spin surrounding the Transitional National Council victory in Libya that it is difficult to interpret the outcome, and perhaps premature to do so at this point considering that the fighting continues and the African Union has withheld diplomatic recognition on principled grounds.

Reporters Without Borders calls for the revision or withdrawal of the charges against Leocenis García, the editor of the weekly Sexto Poder, and Dinorah Girón, its publisher, in connection with a satirical photomontage published on 20 August, especially as they are inconsistent with a judge’s decision this week to lift the ban imposed on the weekly the day after it appeared.

Its was expected; nevertheless, the announcement that agricultural development will be among the top cooperation priorities between Israel and South Sudan has raised fresh, deep fears in Cairo and Khartoum that intensive farming techniques and dams construction will end up depriving Sudan and Egypt from a vital portion of their Nile water sharing already scarce quotas.

“Why are Ethiopians starving again? What should the world do and not do?” These are the two enduring questions Time Magazine asked in December 21, 1987. The reply in short was couched as a question: “Is the latest famine wholly the result of cruel nature, or are other, man-made forces at work that worsen the catastrophe?” Something that should strike as déjà vu 24 years later.

A court in Oakland, California, has sentenced two men to life imprisonment without parole for the August 2007 murder of Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey but it took much too long to render justice in this case.

By Thomas H. Naylor*/Counterpunch

Could it be that when Nobel Peace Laureate Barack Obama leaves office that the defining image of his presidency will have been his use of unmanned drone aircraft and military death squads to achieve the will of the Empire?