North America

US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said today that if they get UN authorization, his country might launch a military intervention in Syria, the scene of conflict between the government and armed opposition.
According to Panetta, his main responsibility is to guarantee that Washington gets the support needed from the international community to deploy its troops in Syria.

Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, CLASSE spokesman, pleaded not guilty when he appeared in court, 29 May 2012, in Quebec’s city courtroom. The ongoing drama has made the student leader something of an international hero to his fellows but clearly he’s a stone-in-the-shoe for the authorities, and for those students who want to to along with system as is.

The NATO-Free Future gathering in Chicago coincides with a rising global movement against war, militarism, inequality and poverty. We represent the pro-peace and justice majority, the global 99%. We heed the wisdom of Dr.Martin Luther King Jr.’s call to challenge the “triple evils” of poverty, racial inequality and militarism.

Bill 78 is an affront to basic freedoms that goes far beyond what is permissible under provincial, national, international human rights laws. What began as protests led by student groups over a proposed hike in tuition fees have expanded in size and focus in recent weeks, with more than 2,000 arrests being made. On 23 May close to 700 protesters were arrested in several cities.

The federal government will support the private bill C-309 aiming at prohibiting wearing mask during a demonstration, said Sunday the Canadian Minister for Justice, Rob Nicholson. Accoring to the minister the dissimulation of the identity would be criminal. To take part in a riot while carrying a mask or dissimulate its identity would be criminal in Canada.

The Canadian Association of University Teachers is strongly condemning Quebec’s Bill 78, the law tabled in Quebec to end the 14-week student strike, for violating fundamental freedoms of association, assembly, and expression. Already, the bill has received strong criticism from the Quebec Bar Association, student groups, labour organizations, and civil liberties groups.

World leaders are convening at Camp David in Maryland for the G8 Summit. Leading nonprofits such as Save the Children and Oxfam are urging G8 leaders to live up to a 2009 pledge of $22 billion towards food security in developing nations of which only a quarter has been met. Activists are also urging G8 leaders to build on their previous commitments to urgently tackle hunger.

In Quebec there are more than 200,000 students on strike – they are on strike saying that the student fee increase is stopping a lot of them access to college and university education. The students have been on strike for four months. The response of the Quebec government was to this day take Law-78 onto its books, to break the student union and to break the student’s strike.

The Occupy Wall Street movement call for action “Another NYC Is Possible: May 10-15 Week of Actions Against Budget Cuts And Austerity” in solidarity with the global movement “MAY 12TH GlobalMay” that took place in over 80 cities.

New York people walked to Times Square and sit down together to read the statement we publish here:

Shareholder meetings can be routine, unless you are Bank of America, in which case it may be declared an “extraordinary event”. That is what the city of Charlotte, North Carolina called the bank’s shareholder meeting this week. Bank of America is currently the second largest bank in the US (after JP Morgan Chase), claiming more than $2tn in assets.