Region

On 19th August, the last US army combat brigade left Iraq. It was 1:30 on Thursday when soldiers from the Fourth Stryker Brigade of the Second Infantry Division crossed the border with Kuwait. There were 56 thousand soldiers still on Iraqi territory for “stabilisation” tasks, such as training Iraqi armed forces and police.

From the 17th to the 20th of August the XVI São Paulo Forum Meeting, created in 1990 took place in the City of Buenos Aires. Political parties, organizations and representatives from 18 countries in the region participated in the event. Overthrown Honduran President, Manuel Zelaya was present. The Humanist Party from Argentina participated in all workshops.

After a week of negotiations, the main conclusions of the World Peoples Conference on Climate Change and the Right of Mother Earth (Cochabamba, April 2010) have been incorporated in the document of United Nations on Climate Change, that now have been recognized as a negotiation text for the 192 countries which has been congregated in Bonn, during the first week august of 2010.

Almost 1500 assistants gathered last Saturday in 20 Parks of Study and Reflection in America, Asia and Europe. Young people, elderly people, women, men, students, workers, and a variety of customs, ethnic backgrounds and cultures joined together to take part in a meeting where the collective understanding was the distinctive feature of the day.

A new process of preparatory work for the Disciplines, an internal process of transformation giving access the Profound spaces of the Mind, begins in the Parks of Study and Reflection on Saturday August 14th. In 20 parks across America, Europe and Asia, thousands of people will attend to begin the work of the Siloist School.

The United Nations says the number of people suffering from the massive floods in Pakistan has now exceeded 13 million which is more than the combined total of people affected by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the 2005 Kashmir earthquake and the 2010 Haiti earthquake combined, though the death toll in Pakistan is far lower.

The Chilean humanist Tomás Hirsch presented the book “Parks of Study and Reflection, Beacons of the New Spiritual Horizon of Humanity”. He informed about these places of inspiration for a new spirituality. The conference took place at the Book Fair in San Lorenzo, organized by members of the Carcarañá Park of Study and Reflection, near the city of Rosario, Argentina.

Bradley Manning, 22-year-old US soldier posted to Iraq in the military intelligence service, shall be tried – and, of course, sentenced- by a war council that the high command of his own Army will preside over. His crime is to have spread true but secret information on the US wars of occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Muscovites have brought airports to a standstill with attempts to leave the Russian capital where the air has become unbreathable and visibility enormously reduced due to the dense smoke clouds from fires which in the last hours have been growing, due mainly to the very high temperatures of this summer; the highest registered in decades.

On the 2nd and 3rd of August, the Argentinean province of San Juan was the venue for the 39th meeting of the board of the Common Market and Summit of the Leaders of MERCOSUR and Associated States . The main achievement was the Customs Code “a document, a very important piece of regional legislation”, which has been agreed, and which is the result of six years of work.