20/08/2011
Human Wrongs Watch
By Badriya Khan in Brussels
The world is over-armed; the world is over-hungry. This is not a new slogan – this is a proven fact showing that the world spends well over 1,6 trillion dollars a year on weapons, while more than one billion people are hungry and record high food prices are causing more hunger and deaths. Just think that one of every six persons on Earth either does not eat at all or is always hungry.
Credit: UN
The latest figure gives more than one billion good reasons to disarm the planet. The chances for the current scenario to change are, however, very little, if any.
Why? Because the weapons business is too commercially profitable and politically powerful – much more than governments and logic.
Here are some facts. The prestigious Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) reported in April 2011 that world military expenditure in 2010 is estimated to have been 1,630 billion dollars, an increase of 1.3 % in real terms in spite of the global financial crisis.
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Posted in Africa, Asia, Latin America & Caribbean, Market Lords, Middle East, Mother Earth, Others-USA-Europe-etc., The Peoples, War Lords |
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18/08/2011
Human Wrongs Watch
By Raúl de Sagastizabal/Politicapress.com*
Hot money is the “purely speculative money,” which enters into an economy or an economic sector in order to earn a short-term and/or huge profit and leave quickly, as long as it finds more profit elsewhere. Hot money refers the funds that net speculators move, the professional speculators, who spend 24/7 looking for the opportunity to obtain more and more profits.
Wall Street | Wikimedia Commons
There is no consensus among economists, even among government authorities, on the advantages and disadvantages of speculation.
There is no consensus either on the difference between “positive” speculation and the “net”, professional speculation.
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Posted in Africa, Asia, Latin America & Caribbean, Market Lords, Others-USA-Europe-etc. |
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15/08/2011
Human Wrongs Watch
By Kevin Ovenden/Socialistworker.org*
What did people expect? Just over a year ago, during the general election campaign in Britain, I remember George Galloway on the stump
warning that the last time the Tories came in to replace an already dead Labour government and pursue full-blooded, class war policies, Britain’s cities went up in flames.
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Posted in Market Lords, Others-USA-Europe-etc. |
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15/08/2011
Human Wrongs Watch
By Badriya Khan in Brussels
Expensive studies prepared by prestigious organisations come now to say that the “physical” trading in human beings is the third most profitable “illicit” business after drug and arms trafficking. Does this imply that trafficking in the savings, properties, jobs and fate of hundreds of millions of citizens all over the world –as a commodity subject to speculations by “market lords”– does not fall into the category of “illicit” business?
Apparently it is so. In fact, studies by UN specialised bodies and outstanding “clubs of the rich” organisations seem to ignore the ongoing, uncontrolled financial trafficking in the fate of human beings by private corporations and banks, as well as by the so-called ratings agencies, led by the U.S.-based Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s Investor Service, and Fitch Rating.
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Posted in Africa, Asia, Latin America & Caribbean, Market Lords, Others-USA-Europe-etc., The Peoples |
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10/08/2011
Human Wrongs Watch
While politicians in rich countries have been rescuing powerful “market lord” –private corporations and banks that have unleashed the global financial crisis or strongly contributed to it– for the sake of receiving their ‘electoral blessing’, the prices of grain and milk in the drought-hit Horn of Africa have risen to record highs. In Somalia, the price of maize is now 200 % higher that a year ago.
Thousands of Somalis have fled their country to escape famine | Credit: UN
These new records are exacerbating famine and hardship for the estimated 12.4 million people in the region who are facing severe food shortages and famine in some parts of Somalia, UN says.
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Posted in Africa, Market Lords, Mother Earth, Others-USA-Europe-etc., The Peoples |
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10/08/2011
Human Wrongs Watch
Oil floating on the water's surface in Ogoniland | Credit:UN
Families in Nisisioken Ogale, near a Nigerian National Petroleum Company pipeline, are drinking water from wells contaminated with benzene, a known carcinogen, at levels over 900 times above UN World Health Organization guidelines.
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Posted in Africa, Market Lords, Mother Earth, Others-USA-Europe-etc., The Peoples |
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10/08/2011
Human Wrongs Watch
James Illingworth/ International Socialist Organization*
Britain is reeling after several nights of rioting in major cities across the country–the worst civil unrest in a least a generation. What began at the end of last week as a series of protests against police brutality and racism has escalated into a major crisis of the entire social and political order, with police apparently losing control in parts of major cities.
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Posted in Market Lords, Others-USA-Europe-etc., The Peoples |
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06/08/2011
Human Wrongs Watch
By Raul de Sagastizabal*
Europe is on the verge of collapsing and the world is again in the quagmire, the reason being Europe, rather than just Greece, is the planet’s soft belly, and the impact of Europe’s eventual downfall would make itself felt throughout the world, even if Germany, or France, could somehow be spared.
ECB | Image: Eric Chan**
The scale of impact is unpredictable, but potentially worse than that of the recent toxic assets crisis.
The European bloc is the second largest economy, the first trade partner of China, the largest importer of Russian energy and the first buyer of high quality raw materials (it still holds the Hilton quota, the world’s most expensive meat quota).
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Posted in Market Lords, Others-USA-Europe-etc., The Peoples |
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05/08/2011
Human Wrongs Watch
By Baher Kamal
Imagine a big swimming pool, as big as the Mediterranean sea—2,5 million km2. Imagine 150-200 million people sitting on its edges (resident costal population); other 300 millions coming from abroad every year (tourists), and 2.000 big ships and oil tankers crossing its waters at any given minute –let alone industries and oil refineries. Imagine all of them dumping their polluting waste and materials in this semi-closed sea, where a drop of water takes 80 to 150 years to be renewed through contact with open oceans.
Imagine, as well, that up to just few years ago, 48% urban centres lacked of sewage treatment facilities; 80% of wastewater was disposed of in the sea untreated, and industrial activities as a key source of pollution, coming mainly from the chemical/petro-chemical and metallurgy sectors.
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Posted in Africa, Asia, Market Lords, Mother Earth, The Peoples |
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03/08/2011
Human Wrongs Watch
By Baher Kamal and Fareed Mahdy
Over six years ago, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair asked Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf: What can we (the West) do for you (Pakistan) to strengthen you position in the region? Musharraf replied: Solve the Palestinian problem!
Source: Al Jazeera
Four years later, former U.S. National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft (under George H. W. Bush 1989-1993 and previously Gerald Ford 1975-1977) appeared to hold a similar view.
Both Blair and Scowcroft rightly considered that solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is an indispensable step to take, in order to better deal with the other Great Middle East conflicts, Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan included, not mentioning Central Asia in its whole. This solution consists of creating a Palestinian State.
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Posted in Africa |
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HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 