International

Pressenza announces Noam Chomsky, whom The New York Times Book Review has called “arguably the most important intellectual alive,” as a new featured columnist. In his inaugural article, the professor at the MIT and author of over a 100 books comments on the use of torture by the Bush administration to obtain evidence proving the connection between Al-Qaeda and Iraq within the greater historical context.

In a 50 minute audience, today at 5pm, the President of Ecuador, economist Rafael Correa, spoke with much joy and fraternity to Rafael de la Rubia and Tomas Hirsch, to express his resolute commitment to the World March for Peace and Nonviolence.

A joint American-Russian commission has concluded the proposed US missile defense system in Eastern Europe would be ineffective against the types of Iranian missiles it would purportedly aim to stop.

In a meeting with the Israeli Prime Minister, Obama made a proposal that marks a difference with the previous policy pushed by his predecessor George W. Bush.

More than 2000 representatives of indigenous villages and communities from around the world are attending the Forum for Indigenous Affairs held at the U.N. headquarters in New York City.

Russia and the United States started a two day round of negotiations to solidify a new agreement replacing the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.

With the death of Tamil Tiger leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran (54) and the military defeat of the LTTE, a bitter end of a violent path has come to the nearly 3 million Sri Lanka´s tamils.

After several years work by Nobel Peace Laureates and organizations, the “First Draft of the Charter for a World without Violence” was approved. The final version of it was approved recently at the 8th World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates.

Several important objections have come in, from knowledgeable and experienced observers, to my last column arguing that pronouncing oneself in favour of human rights should predicate opposition to war. One is from Professor George Kent of the University of Hawaii, who says:

*“I think it is important not to mix outrage at particular incidents within wars with opposition to war as such. The two call for quite different strategies.

Prospects for dealing with particular violations of humanitarian and human rights law seem better than prospects for banishing war altogether. New institutional arrangements are needed to ensure accountability for those violations. Having the perpetrators chant, ‘We are investigating’ is not good enough”*.

In the midst of a heavy offensive from the army against Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), hundreds of civilians die in the last days and many thousands are still trapped.