International

It’s more than two thousand years since Greece was a superpower, yet its leaders prefer bombs to books, says Steve McGiffen. “The fact that the principal suppliers of these arms are two of ‘austerity’s’ biggest proponents, the USA and Germany, should not surprise us. Year on year, Greece has been spending money it does not have on weapons it does not need.”

June 25, International Day of Action for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons. The Peace Movement in Fukushima remains active and strong! The Peace March for Nuclear Abolition enters Fukushima Prefecture. 140 actions in 25 countries support the call for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons as the leader of the permanent members of the UN Security Council prepare to meet in Paris.

Ivo Ghignoli, NO-TAV militant, humanist, regional leader of ARCI, reports on the brutal actions of the police at the nonviolent barricade, put in place to defend the sacrosanct right of people to self-determination of their destiny. It’s been years that in Val di Susa, north-west of Italy, the NO-TAV movement asks that the works for High-speed trains not be carried out.

A Nuclear Weapons Lab in New Mexico and a Nuclear Power Plant in Nebraska continue to show the on going safety issues and the consequent threats posed by these high risk technologies as these articles from Democracy Now show.

The call for Real Democracy Now led to campsites being formed in the largest squares of the largest cities of Spain with the name the “M-15 Movement” calling for a new democracy, political transparency and reform of the electoral law. Now the movement takes to the roads building a momentum of activism that will converge on Madrid on the 23rd of June.

In an historic vote, the state of New York, the third largest in the United States, legalised Gay Marriage last night joining Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont and Washington, D.C. The legislation comes into effect on the 24th of July with thousands of couples expected to take the opportunity to legalise their partnerships.

The second day at the Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum in Bonn and a continuously rising temperature. After the first panels on the opening day and exchanging cards with journalists from all over the world, the second day gave us vibrant meetings and high emotional intensity. Women were the protagonists.

Ednaldo Figueira, a blogger, politician and owner of the local newspaper O Serrano, was gunned down on 15 June in Serra do Mel, a town in the northeastern state of Rio Grande do Norte. He headed the Serra do Mel branch of the Workers Party (PT), the party of President Dilma Rousseff and her predecessor, Lula da Silva, and posted regularly on the Serra do Mel blog.

After six years of non-violent struggle against the Israeli separating wall by the people of Bil’in, the army has begun to dismantle a section of the West Bank Wall. In turn, the demonstrations continue to pressure for a new route which will not separate farmers from their land.

On Monday night Ireland suffered the most violent incidents in a decade between Protestants and Catholics, who clashed in the city of Belfast some even firing guns, according to Irish police. In the images broadcast by television there were hundreds of youths throwing stones and Molotov cocktails in the Short Strand area.