International

Two weeks before the start of the Rio+20 Summit Mr. Kazumi Matsui, Mayor of Hiroshima and President of Mayors for Peace has added his signature to the [Rio+20 Appeal](http://www.inesglobal.com/Disarmament-for-Sustainable-Development.phtml) calling on governments to cut military spending in favor of sustainable development.

The global campaign against nuclear weapons has picked up steam recently through a shift in approach from its previous emphasis on challenging the nuclear weapon states (NWS) towards a greater focus on empowering the non-NWS to implement their right to a nuclear weapons-free world.

This was advanced in the 2010 NPT Review Conference agreement.

Political commentator Sai Latt says human rights abuses and violence are committed not only by the state but also by different ethno-religious groups against each other. Racism and racial profiling in the media deserve careful attention, and the transnational nature of fostering ethno-religious intolerance as part of the new dynamic of human rights need to be addressed.

A group of activists protesting capitalism in general and Quebec’s tuition hikes in particular – tried to walk on Crescent Street with «Pot and Pan» on the Montreal street most closely associated with Canadian Grand Prix but police and security guard stop them. Thousands of Formula One fans flock to Crescent St. for the expensive cars, the fee swag and the popular nightclubs.

In a June 9, 2012 article John Rosenthal drew attention to the words of U.N. special envoy Kofi Annan, about a “tipping point” in the Syria conflict: the savage massacre of over 90 people, predominantly women and children, for which the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad was immediately blamed by virtually the entirety of the Western media.

I wrote an article that I helped reconstruct demolished Palestinian homes out of civil disobedience. After the article by Melanie Lidman in The Jerusalem Post on April 30, stating that the Interior Ministry was accusing me of illegally constructing Palestinian homes demolished by the municipality, I wrote an op-ed that appeared on May 8.

When it becomes clear to everyone that the all-powerful economists have little to offer other than more cuts, more austerity measures, more insults (“go pay your taxes” or “you’re poor because you are lazy”), then people realise it’s up to them, and real human creativity takes over. That’s how a crisis becomes an opportunity.

US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said today that if they get UN authorization, his country might launch a military intervention in Syria, the scene of conflict between the government and armed opposition.
According to Panetta, his main responsibility is to guarantee that Washington gets the support needed from the international community to deploy its troops in Syria.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s protracted effort to fight extradition to Sweden suffered a body blow this week. Britain’s Supreme Court upheld the arrest warrant, issued in December 2010. After the court announced its split 5-2 decision, the justices surprised many legal observers by granting Assange’s lawyers an opportunity to challenge their decision.

In April of this year, I wrote that the upheaval in Syria (the Sunni majority revolt against the Alawite-dominated regime) has turned into a battleground between the Sunni axis led by Turkey and Saudi Arabia and the Shiite axis led by Iran. As events continue to unfold in the region, particularly the Sunni Islamists’ monopolization of the political processes in … (read more)