Politics

Under the motto “Vicenza fights back” pacifists of the Italian city of Vicenza protested against the expansion of the US military base there. Braving the winter snow and cold, they entered the zone currently under construction making a laughing stock of security guards during their change of shift, and hanging peace banners from the tops of cranes.

In a move expected to heighten tension in the Middle East, the Obama administration is quietly expanding its land- and sea-based missile shield system in the Persian Gulf region. The US is dispatching Patriot defensive missiles to Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait. In addition, the US is keeping two ships in the Gulf capable of shooting down missiles.

The US President who had made a commitment to reducing his country’s nuclear arsenal, acknowledging the United States’ responsibility for having dropped the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs, and pledged to work to achieve a world that is free of nuclear weapons as soon as possible, has let everyone down by breaking his promises.

Not even Simón Bolívar, as brave as he was known to be, had the courage to sign diplomatic recognition of the country of African descendants. Bolívar was able to re-launch his struggle for American independence, when Spain had already defeated him, thanks to Haiti’s support. The government of Haiti had supported him with the sole condition that Bolivar free the slaves.

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.

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.

With 142 member nations already signed on, the new International Renewable Energy Agency is promoting a fast, global transition to clean, safe, and renewable energy. Alice Slater explains why it’s so necessary. “Every 30 minutes, enough of the sun’s energy reaches the Earth’s surface to meet global energy demand for an entire year.”

In three languages, Aymara, Quechua, and Spanish, Evo Morales proclaimed that in Tiwanaku, a new ray of hope was born for humanity and a new Bolivian State, after receiving the ceremonial staff of the indigenous peoples, who anointed him as a spiritual guide in the ruins of a thousand-year-old civilization, to mark the beginning of his second presidential term.

Bolivia points the way to emancipation for the world’s indigenous peoples with the consolidation of the process of change and the indigenous leader Evo Morales’ second presidential term. This was affirmed on Wednesday by the Guatemalan Rigoberta Menchú, a well known human rights activist and a Nobel Peace Prize winner.

The Obama administration will not unveil the results of a major review of United States’ nuclear weapons strategy until March 1 2010, a senior Defense Department official told Congress late last month, “Because of the complexity of the issues being addressed”. Reports reveal dissension within the Obama administration.