International

Haiti is preparing for a massive relocation of survivors of last week’s earthquake out of the capital Port-au-Prince. Some 400,000 people will be moved to camps outside the city. The relief effort has now abandoned most efforts to find people trapped beneath the rubble to focus on keeping the survivors alive. The US is now leading the effort to repair Haiti’s main port.

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.

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.

Authorities in Haiti say as many as 200.000 have died in last week’s devastating earthquake. Another 1, 5 million and a half people have been left homeless. The death toll continues to rise as relief agencies struggle to distribute food and water to those in need. The World Food Programme said it fed about 100,000 people in Port-au-Prince on Monday.

Doctors Without Borders, international humanitarian organisation delivering medical care and awarded the Nobel Peace prize in 1999, is carrying out effective action by assisting and helping voluntarily in the city of Port au Prince, recently devastated by an earthquake. The natural and human disaster stirred compassion in numerous organisations and governments around the world.

Aung San Suu Kyi, the pro-democracy leader and Nobel Peace Laureate who won the 1990 general election in Burma and who has been under house arrest for 14 of the last 20 years, has her appeal against her house arrest heard by the Supreme Court in Myanmar. “From a purely legal point of view we should win,” said a member of her legal team.

Around 5am on January 18th 500 police were mobilized with three cranes to suppress protests against work on the new naval base which will be the home base for Aegis destroyers of the U.S. and South Korea naval forces. Protesters have been calling for the base to be shelved, claiming that nearby coral reefs will be destroyed in the process.

On November 19th, President Barack Obama wrote a stirring tribute in USA Today to the most famous draft resister in US history, Muhammad Ali. On Tuesday, Obama spoke at West Point, calling for an increase of 30,000 troops into Afghanistan, with a speech that recalled the worst shadings of George W. Bush’s “war on terror.”

Today the Doomsday clock was moved back by 1 minute to 11:54pm today in a press conference of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. In a move to align the environmental and anti-nuclear movements, speakers pointed out the need to tackle climate change as well as implement strategies for nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation.

Two days after some 15,000 people from around the world celebrated the conclusion of the first World March for Peace and Non Violence in the heart of the Andean mountain range, many of its organisers and participants came together to shape the future of the humanist organisation ‘World without War and without Violence.’