Europe

Amidst growing apprehension that the United States and its allies might use radioactive weapons in Libya, as they are reported to have done in several local and limited wars beginning with the 1991 Iraq War, the International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons (ICBUW) is calling for a global treaty to prohibit such arsenal.

By Jaya Ramachandran

The former Landsbankinn in Iceland that went bankrupt in the big financial crash in Iceland in October 2008 offered its British customers sky high interests, way above any that of any other bank. The question at stake in the referendum is whether or not Icelandic taxpayers should compensate those who put their money in the Icesave account now that Landsbankinn is bankrupt.

During the March 26th demonstration in London a group of nonviolent protesters from UK Uncut occupied the Fortnum and Mason luxury store in Piccadilly to bring attention to it’s owners tax avoidance strategies. In spite of their not causing any damage the protesters were arrested after being promised by the police they would not be if they agreed to leave peacefully.

The likelihood of DU use in Libya has now increased following the deployment and use of A-10 and Harrier AV-8B aircraft. ICBUW calls for pressure to be brought on the US to clarify the situation, and to put DU ammunition beyond use.

Laureates of the Right Livelihood Award and members of the World Future Council have called for a global phase-out of atomic power reactors as well as the abolition of nuclear weapons. In a joint statement, fifty laureates said the Japanese nuclear disaster had raised global awareness of the extreme dangers that can result from nuclear power generation.

Countries which continue to use the death penalty are being left increasingly isolated following a decade of progress towards abolition, Amnesty International has said today in its new report Death Sentences and Executions in 2010.
A total of 31 countries abolished the death penalty in law or in practice during the last 10 years.

Since 2008 the vast majority of the Western population dream about saying “no” to the banks, but no one has dared to do so. No one except the Icelanders, who have carried out a peaceful revolution that has managed not only to overthrow a government and draft a new constitution, but also seeks to jail those responsible for the country’s economic debacle.

While Barack Obama justifies the attacks and gives unconditional support to his Israeli equivalent, Netanyahu, Europe debates among numerous crises. Some governments have decided to get through the crisis with war, others have disassociated themselves, and Germany, on the other hand, finds Merkel trying to suspend her government.

Over a year has passed since the end of the World March for Peace and Nonviolence and the Humanist organisation, World without Wars and Violence (WwW), is preparing itself to launch a new global campaign to build on the success of the March as another element in a string of increasingly large actions to take place since its foundation in 1995.

The Libyan uprising continues and UN forces have started bombing to enforce a UN no-fly zone. World without Wars condemns the violence, the hypocrisy of Western governments and their policy of preventative war. “A war is underway and we believe that if it is not stopped immediately it will lead to a massive disaster affecting all the countries of the Mediterranean and beyond.”