CPNN (Culture of Peace News Network) Bulletin of May 1, 2019

PRESS FREEDOM UNDER ATTACK

Freedom of the press is under attack around the world, with the biggest deterioration in North and South America. And the most spectacular and dangerous example is the arrest of Julian Assange of Wikileaks and the threat that he he may be extradited and tried by a kangaroo court in the United States.

According to Bruce Shapiro, the executive director of the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma at Columbia University School of Journalism, the very essence of the press freedoms in the United States is under attack in the U.S. attempt to extradite and try Assange. He calls it an “attempt to criminalize investigative reporting.”

Not only freedom of the press, but also democracy, human rights and peace are under attack.

Daniel Ellsberg, himself the courageous whistle-blower of the Pentagon Papers that revealed the lies of the Vietnam War, puts it this way: “Without whistleblowers we would not have a democracy. And there have to be people to distribute work and publish it. Julian Assange has done that in a way in which other publishers have not been willing to. . . . it is now up to us to make sure that the First Amendment is preserved.”

United Nations experts, including the UN Special Rapporteur on extra-judicial executions, the UN independent expert on the right to privacy, and the UN Special Rapporteur on torture warned that the arrest and threatened extradition of Assange is a violation of his human rights, “including his freedom of expression, his right to a fair trial, and the prohibition of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

An example of how Wikileaks revelations promoted democracy comes from Kenya. Writing in Al Jazeera, Patrick Gathara describes how a report about government corruption was suppressed by that same government, but was obtained and revealed by Julian Assange and Wikileaks. Gathara states that  “For once, Kenyans were afforded an unvarnished and detailed glimpse of the amount of national wealth that was being stolen by the very people tasked with protecting it.”

The list of Wikileaks evelations of government corruption is quite long, and it takes the journalist Alison Weir 8,000 words to describe them in the article we have reprinted in CPNN. Wikileads revealed “the U.S. government’s cover-up of torture, cruelty, the killing of civilians, spying on its own citizens and others. It exposed Democratic Party cheating and manipulation, the fraudulence of ‘Russiagate.’ It unmasked Israeli plans to keep Gaza on the brink of collapse, to use violence against Palestinian nonviolence, to make war upon civilians.” And the list could be even longer, if one includes examples like the corruption in Kenya mentioned above.

Although the United States is exerting pressure behind the scenes, the arrest was due to the actions of the governments of Ecuador and the UK.
For Noam Chomsky, it shows the global reach of the American empire: “why should the United States have the power to control what others are doing elsewhere in the world? I mean, it’s an outlandish situation. It goes on all the time.”

Fortunately, many people are taking positive steps to support Assange. In CPNN, we have carried several articles of support from Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire. On January 7 she nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize. And after his arrest in April, she demanded the right to visit him in prison.

Mairead Maguire reminds us that the actions of Assange are an important contribution to peace: “By Julians courageous actions and others like him, we could see full well the atrocities of war. . . . I live in an era where people like Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning and anyone willing to open our eyes to the atrocities of war, is likely to be haunted like an animal by Governments, punished and silenced.  . . .. This man is paying a high price to end war and  for peace and nonviolence and we should all  remember that.”

      

FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION


2019 World Press Freedom Index – A cycle of fear

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Photo essay: Climate Change Protests Sweep Europe

WOMEN’S EQUALITY


UNCSW63’s positive outcomes for women’s human rights

EDUCATION FOR PEACE

National Campaign for Peace Education launched in Cameroon

DISARMAMENT AND SECURITY

Statement on Escalating Tensions in Venezuela Issued by the Caribbean Community

HUMAN RIGHTS

South Africa Launches Plan to Combat Xenophobia and Racism

TOLERANCE AND SOLIDARITY

Haiti – Dominican Republic : “For a culture of peace theme of the week of the diaspora

DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPATION

Benin: The Youth Movement for the Preservation of Peace and Democracy

CPNN (Culture of Peace News Network) bulletin of April 1, 2019

A GLOBAL YOUTH MOVEMENT ?

Millions of students went on strike from school on March 15 to pressure their governments to address seriously the problem of global warming. Photos from that day on CPNN show their demonstrations around the world: in the UK, Australia, Philippines, Sweden, Italy, Uganda, Belgium, USA, Canada, Portugal, Ukraine, Spain, Chile, Nigeria, France and Bangladesh.

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CPNN (Culture of Peace News Network) bulletin of March 1, 2019

VENEZUELA: WHAT IS HAPPENING?

The commercial media almost without exception continues to support the United States and dozens of its allies in its attacks on Venezuela. Hardly a culture of peace!

In order to present an alternative to this “war propaganda,” we review here a series of articles that give the other side.

We begin with critiques of the commercial media coverage.

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CPNN (Culture of Peace News Network) bulletin of February 1, 2019

SLOW NEWS: PEACE EDUCATION

Several years ago we updated the rules for CPNN articles to say that “unlike in the commercial media they do not have to be ‘breaking news.’ Instead, they may reflect the ‘slow news’ of processes that develop slowly over long periods of time.” The reasoning for this was expressed in an article about CPNN in the Journal of Peace Education: “The commercial media emphasize ‘fast news’ or what they often call ‘breaking news.’ This tends to ignore or mask the fundamental processes that make for deep historical change. The processes of historical change accumulate slowly over time. Only rarely do the contradictions arrive at a point of rupture or revolution, at which time events may take place very rapidly.”

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CPNN (Culture of Peace News Network) bulletin of November 1, 2018

NOBEL: END SEXUAL VIOLENCE

It was an important step forward that the recipients of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize were recognized for their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict. The history of the culture of war tells us that: “Rape and other violence against women has been fundamental to the culture of war over the course of history.”

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