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by Carrie Humphries

This year marks the 7th Annual Nonviolence Festival Day in the Park. I remember a few years ago going to the event (hosted by the Waterloo Region chapter of Nonviolence organization) and it poured. Yes, it rained for what seemed like forever. But it didn’t stop the day. The festival, in all its soaked glory, continued on while people danced in the rain.

Since July 9th, a new state, South Sudan, came to join the international community. As usual, mainstream media have both under-reported and under-informed about it. This is a standard practice–mainstream media mostly ‘tells about bleeding events such as wars and deadly attacks. But, what do we know about this new state?

They do not apply the Mexican joke “I kill people for money; but you, my best friend, I will kill you for nothing!”. They are the private “warriors” who always charge for their services. Powerful militaries, key government agencies, large corporations and business and even individuals are increasingly outsourcing aspects of their security to private companies,

Last week it was announced that Rupert Murdoch would be allowed to own all of BSkyB, a large provider of TV and video. Now a series of reports of criminal and indecent journalism on the part of the “News of the World”, part of Murdoch’s newspaper group are coming out. Avaaz is campaigning to flood the BSkyB public consultation and stop the deal.

Demonstrators take to the street tomorrow in Malaysia calling for reforms of the electoral system to make elections clean and fair. The rally, organised by the Coalition for Clean and Fair Elections (Bersih) is supported by the three largest opposition parties in the country but deemed illegal by the government.

Reporters Without Borders condemns local TV reporter Adan Benítez’s murder in the northern port city of La Ceiba (the capital of Atlántida department) on 4 July. Employed by two local stations, 45TV and Teleceiba Canal 7, he was the second journalist to be murdered in Honduras in the past two months.

Just hours before South Sudan becomes independent, a mood of joyful expectation swept through its capital, with crowds dancing in the streets and last-minute preparations ahead of Saturday’s ceremony. Processions of veterans, soldiers and civilians marched through central Juba in the hot sun, some dressed in traditional clothing, playing drums and dancing.

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets across Egypt on Friday to defend the uprising that toppled president Hosni Mubarak, directing their anger at the new military rulers over the slow pace of reform. In the capital, flag-waving protesters packed Tahrir Square, epicentre of the protests that ousted Mubarak in February, after a mass weekly Muslim prayer service.

The UN says that rape is used as a weapon of war, and as a mean of terror to ensure the enslave-ment of civilians. Inspite of this clear definition of such horrific crime, the UN now says that the rapes of hundreds of people in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo“could be considered crimes against humanity and war crimes.”

They give life almost in every way – they deliver generation after generation; they plant seeds and grow crops, feed their families and sell food in rural markets; they bring water and heat and sacrifice themselves for the sake of their families. Yet, they are the victims of a nearly invisible, silent crime as millions of them die every year from preventable causes.