North America

In 1981, the United Nations General Assembly created an annual International Day of Peace to take place on the opening day of the regular sessions of the General Assembly. The purpose of the day is for “commemorating and strengthening the ideals of peace both within and among all nations and peoples.”

Reporters Without Borders is shocked by the murders of reporter Ana María Yarce Viveros, the founder of the weekly magazine Contralínea, and Rocio González Trápaga, a freelance journalist who used to work for Televisa. The bodies of two women were found in a Mexico City park yesterday.

“Why are Ethiopians starving again? What should the world do and not do?” These are the two enduring questions Time Magazine asked in December 21, 1987. The reply in short was couched as a question: “Is the latest famine wholly the result of cruel nature, or are other, man-made forces at work that worsen the catastrophe?” Something that should strike as déjà vu 24 years later.

Ralph Nader, former US Presidential candidate for the Green Party and the guy blamed by the loosing side for the failure of the Democrat, Al Gore, to win the White House reflects on President Obama’s energy policy in a week when a thousand people are expected to be arrested while demonstrating against a new pipeline transporting low quality oil from Canada to the US Gulf Coast.

A court in Oakland, California, has sentenced two men to life imprisonment without parole for the August 2007 murder of Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey but it took much too long to render justice in this case.

By Thomas H. Naylor*/Counterpunch

Could it be that when Nobel Peace Laureate Barack Obama leaves office that the defining image of his presidency will have been his use of unmanned drone aircraft and military death squads to achieve the will of the Empire?

Reporters Without Borders firmly condemns the murder of Humberto Millán Salazar, a journalist based in Culiacán, in the northwestern state of Sinaloa, who edited the online newspaper A-Discussion (http://www.a-discusion.com) and presented a programme on Radio Formula. His body was found yesterday, a day after his abduction in Culiacán. He had been shot in the head.

Reporters Without Borders urges the federal authorities to do everything in their power to find Humberto Millán Salazar, editor of the online newspaper A-Discussion (http://www.a-discusion.com) and presenter of the programme “Sin Ambages” (Plain Language) on Radio Formula, who was kidnapped by gunmen yesterday in Culiacán, the capital of the northwestern state of Sinaloa.

The recent British film In Our Name is a returning-soldier drama featuring a married woman, Suzy, who leaves her husband and little girl to fight in Iraq. Because she’s involved in the killing of a little girl during her tour—this part is based on a true story, but it happened to a man—she returns home only to steadily fall apart under the stress of soul-destroying anxieties.

What does the police killing of a homeless man in San Francisco have to do with the Arab Spring uprisings from Tunisia to Syria? The attempt to suppress the protests that followed. In our digitally networked world, the ability to communicate is increasingly viewed as a basic right. Open communication fuels revolutions—it can take down dictators.