Opinions

A new study by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute has found global military spending rose four percent last year to a record $1.46 trillion despite the global financial crisis.

Hungarian Humanist Party and Politics

Although the cold war ended some 20 years ago, Obama is the first U.S. president to commit to making significant changes in U.S. nuclear weapons policy to reflect new global realities.

What’s happened to the concepts of humanitarian military intervention and the responsibility to protect? How come no-one stepped in to prevent thousands of Sri Lankan Tamils being killed?

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.

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.

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”*.

Democracy Now! – The New York Times reports senior US officials are increasingly concerned about new vulnerabilities for Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, including the potential for militants to snatch a weapon in transport.

One improved in April 2009, according to the new issue of the International Crisis Group’s monthly bulletin CrisisWatch.