Politics

Since 2007, life conditions of the Gazans are turning from bad to worse as a result of the Israeli-enforced blockade. The blockade’s bad consequences have negatively affected all the sectors of the Palestinian society in Gaza Strip especially fishing sector which threaten to hurt thirty-thousand people who are dependent on this industry as their main source of income.

The British National Health Service is facing the biggest onslaught since its creation as a model of extremely cost effective universal health cover free at the point of delivery. UK Uncut occupied Westminster Bridge to defend it, as the Bill to privatise it goes to the House of Lords on Tuesday. Meanwhile in Manchester protesters begin the occupation of the Town Centre.

Around 4 PM, people started to gather at Foley Square, just a few blocks from City Hall. Their goal: to march to Liberty Plaza (Zuccotti Park). The Unions took the initiative to organize the rally in support of Occupy Wall Street, after last week’s police brutality. They had arrested over 800 people, had violently tackled many, and used pepper spray on the protesters.

Reporters Without Borders urges the Chilean congress to reject a government
bill which, in response to a ninth-month-old wave of protests by students
and others,
would violate basic rights by criminalizing the expression of opinions in
public. It also contains disastrous provisions for journalists covering
protests.

Facing clear headed new generations of Chileans and secondary school and university students showing strong political wit after negotiations which were supposed to let the government ignore the strikers’ demands broke down yesterday, today Chile’s militarized carabineros (police) anticipated the protests by carrying out the most brutal repression.

There are people who claim that humanity, since its origins, can only be interpreted in terms of war: we have always killed each other. We kill each other to steal; we kill each other to occupy a particular space, a cave or a piece of fertile land. We also kill each other to be the leader, out of envy, due to jealousy or sadism.

The US Air Force is standing down its plan to launch a nuclear-capable missile on the United Nations International Day of Peace. It’s a very small step, but it is a step in the right direction. It’s possible that the Air Force planners didn’t know about the International Day of Peace or even that there is such a day.

Mayors for Peace is proud to announce that its membership has surpassed the 5000 mark, making Mayors for Peace not only the fastest growing association of local governments in the world, but also, by far the largest international, direct-membership association of local governments.

Nonviolence is a beautiful theory but it doesn’t work in the real world, critics have long argued. It is—they maintain—passive, weak, utopian, naïve, unpatriotic, marginal, simplistic, and impractical. In spite of these widely-held assumptions, however, people around the planet go on building one nonviolent people-power movement after another.

There are sufficient indicators to interpret that we have entered a new moment in international matters. What started in Tunisia and Egypt with the “Arab Spring” has extended to numerous countries on different continents: from the Outraged of Spain and Greece, to Chile where students are demanding free and good quality education through massive, non-violent demonstrations.