International issues

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?

From the blog “Fuera de Lugar” (Out of Place) of publico.es:
Interview with Ali Abu Awwad, by Amador Fernández-Savater and Juan Gutiérrez. Made in the framework of the meetings “Positive peace: a possible challenge” (8th June 2010, Bilbao).

“It looks like the more telling news on Libya has migrated to the business pages. With jubilant reporting of Gaddafi’s imminent downfall seizing headlines, it’s the financial pages that have the clinical analysis.”

Reporters Without Borders firmly condemns the murder of Humberto Millán Salazar, a journalist based in Culiacán, in the northwestern state of Sinaloa, who edited the online newspaper A-Discussion (http://www.a-discusion.com) and presented a programme on Radio Formula. His body was found yesterday, a day after his abduction in Culiacán. He had been shot in the head.