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The state system at its worst: trading insults and threats, sanctions, readiness to use extreme violence, forward deployment of US troops in Israel as hostages to guarantee US involvement, disregard for common people and the effects of warfare in the Middle East and the world.

The UN General Assembly strongly condemned the continued “widespread and systematic” human rights violations by the Syrian authorities and demanded that the Government immediately cease all violence and protect its people.

The present powers calling the shots in Israel want a Jewish State saying the Palestinians can live there freely. Given the state of affairs in Israel vis a vis the Palestinians which has Israel as an apartheid state, that claim does not generate any good vibrations. Here we have the other side’s offering of a secular Palestinian State.

An estimated 10 million people or more are struggling to get enough to eat across the Sahel region, including 5.4 million in Niger alone, representing over one third of its total population. More than a million children under the age of five risk severe acute malnutrition in the region, up from 300,000 last year.

From February 16th to the 18th, the Empowerment and
Education working group of Occupy Wall Street organized a forum to reflect
on the direction and aims of the Occupy movement and articulate strategies for the
movement’s future. The forum occurred at the Church of the Ascension at
122 Java Street in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and was open to the public.

New York, 13 February – The UN General Assembly began meeting on 13 Feb. to discuss the situation inside Syria, where thousands of people have been killed as a result of the Government’s ongoing crackdown against a pro-democracy uprising.

New York – UN General Assembly (UNGA) President Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser is committed to convening an international conference directed at establishing a nuclear-weapons-free zone in the Middle East.

Food shortages have worsened, with the number of South Sudanese without enough to eat rising from 3.3 million last year to 4.7 million currently, according to a new UN [report.](http://www.wfp.org/news/news-release/high-levels-food-insecurity-south-sudan) This figure represents more than 50% of the recently independent oil-rich country, estimated in less than 9 million.

“I continue both personally and through my office to lend all possible support to formal and informal efforts and events dedicated to a timely convening of the 2012 conference. These efforts will continue,” Al-Nasser told Global Perspectives, IDN’s monthly magazine for international cooperation, in a wide-ranging, exclusive question-and-answer interview.

Journalist Pepe Naranjo writes from Dakar the the President of Senegal, Abdoulaye Wade, has acknowledged for some time that he is not legally able to run for a third term of office. Now, he has changed tack and the outstanding issue is that having changed his ‘opinion’ he is going for it and the population sees its democracy endangered.