Humanitarian Texts

2011-06-01: Will Indignation Salvage Spain?
2011-06-01: Adja Diallo, victime collatérale de l’affaire DSK;
2011-06-02: More on OBL;
2011-06-03: Portugal: Left Bloc Fires up to Fight Austerity;
2011-06-04: How a divided Spain started a revolution;
2011-06-04: Indian guru on hunger strike over graft;
2011-06-04: Mon corps m’appartient;
2011-06-05: Opinion: Squaring Asia’s nuclear triangle;
2011-06-05: Excision et les IST/Sida: 18 professeurs formés à la sensibilisation;
2011-06-06: Forget the past, listen to the people;
2011-06-07: Why Washington Isn’t Doing Squat About Jobs and Wages;
2011-06-08: Empire or Republic: How the Empire Destroys its Own People;
2011-06-09: Ratko Mladic and the Pandora’s Box of the Bosnian War;
2011-06-10: The Elite, the Great Game and World War III;
2011-06-10: Berne/Suisse: la loi contre les mutilations génitales sera durcie;
2011-06-11: From Silence to Memory: A Celebration of the Report of the Historic Archives of the National Police;
2011-06-12: Accelerating Action against Child Labour;
2011-06-13: The commodification of water and land in Mali;
2011-06-14: Ai Weiwei: Planting originality, reaping Beijing’s fury;
2011-06-14: La philo en maternelle, des enfants sages qui s’ignorent;
2011-06-15: Iraqi Human Rights Activists Protesting for Democracy Are Sexually Assaulted and Beaten;
2011-06-15: Vers la Tolérance Zéro: Les Mutilations sexuelles Féminines en Europe: La Suisse;
2011-06-16: In memory: Geronimo Ji Jaga Pratt, warrior for justice and freedom;
2011-06-17: NATIONAL ARCHIVES (NARA) RELEASES PENTAGON PAPERS;
2011-06-18: From aid and humanitarianism to solidarity;
2011-06-19: Mauritania: A simple citizen demanding his rights;
2011-06-20: What Parents Can Learn From Prison Guards;
2011-06-21: Afghanistan is most dangerous country for women;
2011-06-22: Condemning the killing of older people on witchraft accusations;
2011-06-23: Death more likely than school for South Sudan’s young – UN;
2011-06-23: Dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei freed;
2011-06-24: The Greek protests are not just about the economic crisis;
2011-06-25: Sign the Dakar Appeal Against Land Grabbing;
2011-06-26: Selling off the farm?
2011-06-27: Ethiopia: Press freedom, the law and democracy;
2011-06-28: Who Does The Law Serve?
2011-06-29: Workers Struggles in the Americas;
2011-06-30: Afghanistan: Taliban Talks Will Betray Women’s Rights.

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Published on Huffpost World, by Ida Lichter M.D., June 27, 2011.

Violent attacks by the Taliban have been increasing. Last month, the principal of a girls’ school near Kabul was assassinated. Yet some observers would have us believe the Taliban have changed their misogynist ideology and deserve another chance in negotiations and power sharing.

Last November, when US President Barack Obama tried to “reach out” to moderate voices among the Taliban, they replied, “We have no moderate voices.”

A leading representative, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, said freedoms won by women in the past few years were “corrupting” them, and men and women shouldn’t be in the same room.  Continue Reading…

Published on the World Socialist Web Site WSWS, 28 June 2011.

Latin America

Protests for wage increases, against police attack on striking Argentine teachers:

• Teachers held a number of strikes and protests in Argentina last week over salary demands and repression of their colleagues. In Puerto Madryn, Esquel, Chubut, Rosario, Buenos Aires and other cities, teachers struck, marched and blockaded streets. Estimates of adhesion varied by location from 30 to 80 percent.One issue highlighted by the protests was the June 23 attack on an encampment of teachers in Buenos Aires. Federal police violently evicted a group of teachers who were attempting to set up an encampment in front of Buenos Aires’ labor ministry. The police dislodged the teachers using water cannons, arresting four and injuring nine.
• The dislodged teachers are from the southern province of Santa Cruz and have been on strike for two months over wage demands, which have been met with intransigence by the provincial government. The encampment was meant to bring attention to their demands and force the intervention of the Ministry of Labor.   Continue Reading…

Published on Global Research.ca, by Paul Craig Roberts, June 26, 2011.

… As readers know by now, I have little patience with those who let their emotions determine their analysis.  Let’s look further at this case.  It is a known fact that Sarkozy’s political operatives in France knew of Strauss-Kahn’s arrest before it was announced by the New York police. French, but not American, newspapers have wondered how this could be.

Perhaps the hotel maid thought to call up Sarkozy’s people and tell them.

Note also that the alleged victim has a very high-priced major league lawyer representing her that she not only does not need but also obviously cannot afford to pay.  Continue Reading…

Published on Pambazuka News, by Ron Singer, June 23, 2011.

Dawit Kebede, editor-in-chief of Ethiopian newspaper, the Awramba Times, speaks to Ron Singer about the perils of working in the media – from his arrest by the government to his struggle to get a license for a new paper – and his disappointment with US academics’ failure to support Ethiopian democracy.

Dawit Kebede (b. 1980) is editor-in-chief of the Awramba Times, a weekly newspaper in Amharic which has the second-largest circulation of any Ethiopian paper, and which is also the sole remaining dissident print newspaper inside the country. Kebede is the recipient of a 2010 International Press Freedom Award from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).  Continue Reading…

Published on Food Crisis and the Global Land Grab, by Mike Pope, June 24, 2011.

There is nothing new about foreign investment in Australian agribusiness. It’s been going on for over 200 years. Many investors create something new, something not tried before. It may be a different approach to management, the use of new technology or crop varieties, better handling of produce, consolidation of smaller properties and larger scale operations or new markets and new competition … //

… What we find is that a number of things are happening which have not occurred before. Land and established agribusinesses are now being purchased to:  Continue Reading…

(also in french and spanish) – Published on Food Crisis and the Global Land Grab, June 6, 2011.

During the World Social Forum in Dakar, Senegal, in February 2011, social movements and organisations released a collective appeal against land grabbing. Over 150 organisations have already signed. If your organisation would also like to support this appeal, please do so … (before 15 June 2011, but still working).

The Dakar Appeal, together with the names of organisations endorsing it, will be presented during the mobilizations against the G20 Agriculture Ministers’ meeting in Paris on 22-23 June. If you would like to … communicate directly with the petition author, you can contact the author Sofia Monsalve.

Read and sign the petition here Continue Reading…

They’re a rejection of authority – Published on The Guardian, by Aditya Chakraborrty, June 20, 2011.

A sunny Saturday afternoon in central Athens, and Christos Roubanis is sitting outside having a beer, while telling me about the death threats he’s received. We’re in Victoria Square, one of the most racially mixed areas in the capital. The nearby payphones have queues of Bangladeshis waiting outside, and after every few shops comes that telltale feature of immigrant-ville: a Western Union money transfer booth. Locals reckon that more than a third of residents are non-Greek subjects … //

… You see this clearly in the demonstrations in Syntagma Square in central Athens. Writing for the Guardian’s Comment is Free last week, Birkbeck professor Costas Douzinas found “striking parallels” between the protesters there, for whom “no issue is beyond proposal and disputation”, and the Athenian agora, birthplace of western democracy. Continue Reading…

… freed after three months following tax evasion confession – Published on DAILY MAIL, by reporter, June 23, 2011.

A dissident Chinese artist whose detention in jail sparked international uproar has been released from prison, his family revealed. Ai Weiwei was freed on Wednesday following three months detention after confessing to tax evasion, according to Chinese state media. The bearded artist had been detained at Beijing Airport on April 3 along with dozens of other rights activists and dissidents, sparking widespread anger … Read more:

Linked on our blogs with AlertNet, and with L’enfer d’être une femme en Somalie. – Published on AlertNet, by Katy Migiro, 21 Jun 2011.

NAIROBI (AlertNet) – Children in South Sudan are more likely to die before the age of five than complete a basic education, the United Nations said in a report released on Tuesday.

More money needs to be invested in education to secure peace in South Sudan as the region counts down to independence on 9 July, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) said.

“If you don’t give people hope and opportunities for education, what do you think is going to happen? People who are without hope are people who are going to be far more prone to being drawn into armed conflict,” said Kevin Watkins, director of UNESCO’s educational monitoring report.     Continue Reading…

Linked on our blogs with HelpAge International, and with Changing attitudes to stop witchcraft accusations.

Published on HelpAge International, by Gacheru Maina, June 9, 2011.

In the lead up to World Elder Abuse Awareness Day next week, we are speaking out and condemning in the strongest terms possible the accusations and killings of older men and women based on allegations of witchcraft.

Accusations target the vulnerable:

Belief in witchcraft is strong in most African countries and a range of factors can lead to accusations, but recent studies have shown that the accusations are often made maliciously and specifically target poor and vulnerable older people.  Continue Reading…

Linked on our blogs with SPECIAL COVERAGE: The world’s most dangerous countries for women. – Published on TrustLaw.org, by Lisa Anderson, June 15, 2011.

… Violence, dismal healthcare and brutal poverty make Afghanistan the world’s most dangerous country for women, with Congo a close second due to horrific levels of rape, a Thomson Reuters Foundation expert poll said on Wednesday.

Pakistan, India and Somalia ranked third, fourth and fifth, respectively, in the global survey of perceptions of threats ranging from domestic abuse and economic discrimination to female foeticide, genital mutilation and acid attacks.

“Ongoing conflict, NATO airstrikes and cultural practices combined make Afghanistan a very dangerous place for women,” said Clementina Cantoni, a Pakistan-based aid worker with ECHO, the European Commission’s humanitarian aid department.

“In addition, women who do attempt to speak out or take on public roles that challenge ingrained gender stereotypes of what’s acceptable for women to do or not, such as working as policewomen or news broadcasters, are often intimidated or killed.”  Continue Reading…

Advice on how to ensure “voluntary compliance” from your kids—no tear gas involved – Published on Mother Jones, by Dave Gilson, June 17, 2011.

Some of the best parenting advice I’ve ever gotten was from a website for prison guards. While researching a story on prison riots, I was browsing CorrectionsOne, a site for corrections professionals whose typical stories have titles like “Mass. man escapes jail wearing only boxer shorts” and “Alternative Uses for Batons” (sorry, that one’s for sworn correctional officers only). There, amid the Taser ads and tales of prison gangs, I came across an article that changed the way I think about being a dad.

The article, “7 things never to say to anyone, and why”, listed common statements used by prison guards and police officers and explained why they make people do the exact opposite of what they’re being told to do. The seven things were:  Continue Reading…

War schon im Januar 2008 auf meinem Blog Mein privater Garten.

Im Frühjahr 1989 beobachtete ich in der Pariser Metro – dicht neben mir stehend – eine Arabersippe, viele Erwachsene und zwei kleine Kinder. Ein Bub von zwei und ein Mädchen von vier Jahren. Die Fahrt dauerte lange, ich hatte genug Zeit zum hinsehen.

Alle Erwachsene stierten fortlaufend, ohne Unterbruch, mit hätschelnden Blicken auf den kleinen Knaben. Er war offensichtlich ihr innigstes Vergnügen. Das kleine Mädchen wurde während der ganzen halben Stunde nicht ein einziges Mal richtig beachtet. Ich startete eine Provokation. Ich stierte die ganze Zeit nur das Mädchen an, ruhig, innelich lächelnd, selbstbewusst bewunderte ich die Kleine.  Continue Reading…

Published on Pambazuka News, by Sokari Ekine, June 16, 2011.

Following the death by self-immolation of 41-year-old Mauritanian Yacoub Ould Dahoud in January, Sokari Ekine revisits his demands for change in the country. In the wake of the revelations around Gay Girl in Damascus’s true identity, she also explores the outrage and severe criticism directed at the site from those in the LGBTI and Middle Eastern blogosphere.

On 17 January 2011, a 41-year-old Mauritanian businessman, Yacoub Ould Dahoud, burned himself in front of the presidential palace in Nouakchott. He later died in Morocco where he was sent for medical treatment.  Continue Reading…

Discourses on development and the realities of exploitation – Published on Pambazuka News, by Horace Campbell, June 16, 2011.

Horace Campbell charts Africa’s exploitative history of ‘aid’ and the struggle to establish a new global system rooted in dignity, equality and genuine social justice.

January 2011 marked 50 years since Patrice Lumumba of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) was assassinated. This assassination represented one of the many examples of efforts to destroy the African self-determination project. In his book on The Assassination of Patrice Lumumba, Ludo de Witte noted that,

The murder has affected the history of Africa. The overthrow of Congo’s first government, the elimination of Lumumba, the bloody repression of the second resistance to the neocolonial regime of Joseph Kasavubu, Mobutu and Moise Tshombe and finally the creation of the Second Republic in this vast strategic country: the repercussions of all these events had disastrous consequences throughout Africa as a whole.  Continue Reading…

40 Years Later—Full Declassification of “One of the Worst-Kept Secrets in History” – National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 348 – Published on The National Security Archive, by John Prados, June 10 – Update June 13, 2011.

… Different Versions of the Pentagon Papers:

The full version of the Pentagon Papers contains a wealth of new material. Unlike the State Department’s Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series (the official historical record of U.S. diplomacy), which has also covered this period in its published volumes, the Papers focus on specific, thematic subjects in considerable detail. Also distinct from FRUS, which is assembled by professional historians at least 30 years after the fact, the Pentagon Papers were compiled by defense analysts in the immediate aftermath of the events they cover, when developments were still fresh in their minds and they could put their hands on relevant material. In comparison with the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) print of 1971, which until today was the only officially released version of the Pentagon Papers, the declassified volumes will illuminate findings of the Pentagon Papers analysts and data that have long been suppressed. To give just one example, the study contains a selection of data on the war in both North and South Vietnam covering the period of and immediately after the U.S. ground intervention (1965-1967), which is represented in the HASC edition simply by summary charts.  Continue Reading…

Published on Indymedia, by Gloria Riva, June 11, 2011, (first on Liberation).

Geronimo Ji Jaga Pratt, noted Black revolutionary who fought a 27-year battle for freedom after an FBI frame-up, died at his home in Tanzania on June 3 at the age of 63 due to illness. He had been living in Tanzania for several years, after his hard-won release from California prison in 1997.

Geronimo was born Elmer Gerard Pratt on Sept. 13, 1947, the youngest of seven children. He grew up in rural Louisiana, Morgan City, during the era of segregation. Ku Klux Klan attacks on the Black community were common.  Continue Reading…

Publié dans PressAfrik, par Ibrahima Lissa FAYE, le 10 Juin 2011.

… En 2001, une enquête auprès des gynécologues en Suisse a révélé que les MGF se pratiquaient sur toute l’étendue du territoire. Le 17 mars 2005, la Conseillère nationale Maria Roth-Bernasconi a déposé une initiative afin de réprimer les mutilations sexuelles. Au printemps 2010, plus de 20 000 personnes ont accordé leurs voix, lors d’un sondage initié par l’UNICEF en faveur de l’introduction d’une norme pénale afin de réprimer les mutilations sexuelles féminines. Le Conseil national helvétique a adopté ce projet le 16 décembre 2010. Le 7 juin 2011, le conseil d’Etat a entériné ce projet et s’est prononcé lui aussi, en faveur d’un article de loi uniforme en votant à l’unanimité une loi qui sanctionne les mutilations génitales féminines. Continue Reading…

Received by e-mail, From: MADRE, Date: 10/06/2011. – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

MADRE, Rights, Resources and Results for Women Worldwide, CONTACT: Stephanie Küng, MADRE (USA) (212) 627-0444

June 10, 2011 – New York, NY – Today, MADRE learned that pro-democracy activists who gathered in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square were brutally attacked by un-uniformed forces. MADRE’s Iraqi partner group, the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI), states that activists who gathered in the square to continue their weeks of protests for democracy, jobs and an end to corruption were beaten by armed men who were unleashed to disperse the protests.  Continue Reading…

Publié dans Nord éclair, par DOMINIQUE SALOMEZ, le 5 juin 2011.

Quand ils viennent dans la classe de Madame Hanicot, Lola, Ilana, Isaac, Amandine, Louis et leurs copains savent que ce n’est pas pour faire du coloriage, du chant ou du sport. Non. Quand ils viennent dans la salle de Madame Hanicot, c’est pour parler.

Ce mardi-là, les enfants, en classe de grande section, prennent place comme d’habitude sur les bancs, placés en U. Les élèves de cinq ans ont encore de la peinture sur le bout des doigts. Ils venaient de préparer le cadeau de la fête des mères. Une amorce toute trouvée pour aborder le thème du jour : « Mais, dites-moi, à quoi ça sert une maman ? » demande Élisabeth Hanicot, professeure à l’école Marie-Curie de Roncq.  Continue Reading…

Linked on our blogs with Should the Milwaukee Art Museum protest Ai Weiwei’s detention? By Mary Louise Schumacher of the Journal Sentinel, May 20, 2011. – Published on Worldviews Conference, by Lisa Rochon, June 10, 2011.

Try as they may, Chinese authorities cannot disappear Ai Weiwei. During the last two months – ever since the laconic, philosopher-artist, design architect and political activist was seized at a Beijing airport and stuffed away in an unknown location – images and videos of his elegiac work are being watched by a global audience more intensely than ever.

The Guggenheim Museum, the Andy Warhol Foundation and Change.org are circulating online petitions demanding Ai’s release, calls being echoed by the Vancouver Art Gallery and New York’s Museum of Modern Art. “Release Ai Weiwei” has been prominently printed across the light box topping the Tate Modern in London, while, inside, its Turbine Hall hosted 100 million handcrafted sunflower seeds tenderly painted with stripes of black and white, Ai’s most recent, mind-altering installation.  Continue Reading…

Published on Pambazuka News, by Sékou Diarra, June 7, 2011.

Mali’s Dogon have traditionally seen water as a source of life and a public good, with the right to water ‘a prerequisite to all other human rights.’ Now the privatisation of water threatens to exclude citizens from managing their most precious resource, leaving ‘the task with a commercially minded technocracy’, says Sékou Diarra.

Nowadays, politicians in Africa are generally more concerned with market efficiency, economic growth rates, productivity of financial capital and the security of the rich than they are about human rights and the security of the people. In African countries, if progress is identified with economic growth alone, it leads to the gradual loss of the representative aspects of their institutions and an increasing gap between public institutions and citizens; the latter are considered as consumers, clients, people with savings, all merely aimed at benefiting the stock exchanges. At human level, the interconnected crises (food, energy, financial, migratory, democratic etc) and the successive failure of the Conferences on Climate Change in Copenhagen in December 2009 and Cancun in 2010, are the expression of the increased commodification of both material and intellectual aspects of life (land, air/CO2, forests, minerals, genes, education, health, water …).   Continue Reading…

Published on International Labour Organization ILO.

• Today, throughout the world, around 215 million children work, many full-time. They do not go to school and have little or no time to play. Many do not receive proper nutrition or care. They are denied the chance to be children. More than half of them are exposed to the worst forms of child labour such as work in hazardous environments, slavery, or other forms of forced labour, illicit activities including drug trafficking and prostitution, as well as involvement in armed conflict.
• Guided by the principles enshrined in the ILO’s Minimum Age Convention No. 138 and Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention No. 182, The ILO InFocus Programme on Child Labour (IPEC) works to achieve the effective abolition of child labour.
• Accelerating action against child labour – ILO Global report on child labour 2010, published on IPEC, in en / fr / es: Download the 98 pdf-pages.

Same topic in german: Rund 215‘000‘000 Kinder arbeiten … 215 Millionen … zwischen 5 und 17 Jahren, laut ILO.

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Published on The National Security Archive, Electronic Briefing Book No. 347, by Kate Doyle, June 9, 2011, in english and spanish.

… This text is a copy of the speech given by Kate Doyle at the ceremony of the presentation of the report, “From Silence to Memory: Revelations of the Historic Archive of the National Police” at the University of San Carlos in Guatemala City, Guatemala … //

… In reference to the legal instruments that guarantee the right to information – such as, for example, Article 24 of the Access to Information Law, which prohibits the withholding as confidential or classified any information that could contribute to the clarification of violations against fundamental human rights – the AHPN chose to include “the first and last names of all actors, active and passive, mentioned in the documents, be they government or public employees (in the case of the National Police and other state entities such as the Army), confidential collaborators, individuals such as victims and their family members, those who file criminal complaints, individuals with police files, and petitioners, among others.”   Continue Reading…