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The London conference on Afghanistan was a done deal and has been in the works for a long time. The Taliban seem to be resistant to killing, they actually add to their numbers like amoeba and launch attacks ever closer to the hearts of power. So, if military power, the Big Stick, even carried by 44 countries in a coalition does not work, let us try economic power, the carrot.

Victoria Manno is an actor, journalist and pentathlete, among many other interests. Since 2000, she has started the year by performing a challenge for Peace in one of the 6 continents. She joined the organisation World without Wars and began by climbing mount Aconcagua, carrying the World March for Peace and Non Violence flag to the highest point in the Western World.

Over 200 protesters from Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and Stop the War Coalition gathered outside the Afghanistan Conference in London’s Lancaster House. Campaigners greeted Gordon Brown and the visiting Presidents, Prime Ministers and Foreign Ministers with the clear message that majorities in almost all their countries want their troops brought home.

President Obama delivered his first State of the Union address Wednesday night. A full two-thirds of the President’s seventy-minute address was devoted to the economy, the central theme of which was job creation. We get response from MIT professor Noam Chomsky author of Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy.

Montecillo Park for Study and Reflection, which will be located in the surroundings of Cochabamba, will be an addition to other such parks that are located in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, the United States, Brazil, and countries in Europe and Asia. It will be a new place to help ‘unveil that which is Sacred’ in human beings and to promote non-violence and non-discrimination.

Over 50 Italian organisations have demanded the immediate release of Muhaned Abu Awwad, a nonviolence activist and the eldest son of the General Manager of the Palestine association ‘Parents Circle – Families Forum’, who was arrested on January 23 by Israeli armed forces. ‘His arrest falls within the framework of a wider repressive mission’, stated Luisa Morgantini.

Honduras is entering a new phase following the swearing-in of a new president and the departure of the now former president Manuel Zelaya. On Wednesday, President Porfirio Lobo was sworn into office. A wealthy landowner, Lobo was elected in a November race boycotted by Zelaya supporters. Zelaya ended his four-month stay in the Brazilian embassy and left Honduras for exile.

The subject of how to approach this “other world” that’s possible is being debated in Porto Alegre. The capital of the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul is celebrating ten years of the WSF and is welcoming 30,000 delegates from different organisations that have come to participate in the opening inaugurated by Lula da Silvia, President of Brazil.

A week has already passed since I left Punta de Vacas. I have arrived in Geneva and am going to leave my bags at home, in the Valais Mountains.
I’d love to sum up this wonderful adventure. The World March already seems like a far-away memory and a chapter has just ended. The experience and facts now belong to the past.

The Congolese journalist, Caddy Adzuba, is in Spain to receive the award granted by ‘El Club de las 25’, a women’s journalists’ association, for her work raising awareness of the conflict in her country and how this violence is affecting women in particular. Despite receiving death threats, she is pressing forward with the project ‘A Loudspeaker for Silence’.