18/01/2012
Human Wrongs Watch
By Will Kelleher*, Think Africa Press – The first democratic elections in Egypt in over 50 years drew to a close on Wednesday, January 11 with the final runoffs held in some of Daqahleya, Qena and South Sinai’s constituencies. Following the regional trend set by last year’s parliamentary elections in Morocco and Tunisia, Egypt’s Islamist parties are emerging as the clear victors of this political contest.
**Image: courtesy of Gigi Ibrahim | Source: Think Africa Press.
By its own estimates, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) has secured between 40-45% of the vote, making it the most popular party by some distance. The Al Nour party, which subscribes to the more rigid and conservative form of Salafist Islam, again defied observers who predicted its policies would be unpalatable to the electorate by securing around 20% of the vote.
Secular parties, whose supporters were integral to the anti-Mubarak protests in early 2011 and the anti-SCAF [Supreme Council of the Armed Forces] protests last December, have again largely underperformed and will further suffer from Naguib Sawiris’ decision to withdraw his Free Egyptians Party (FEP) from the forthcoming elections for the Shura Council, the upper house of Egypt’s bicameral Parliament.
Egypt remains in a state of political flux. Now the elections are drawing to a close, it remains to be seen which parties will form a lasting coalition with the Muslim Brotherhood and how this coalition will negotiate the transition of power from the SCAF-controlled interim government.
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18/01/2012
Geneva – The UN launched an emergency appeal for just over $300 million to assist Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank who are still dealing with the effects of the conflict that ended three years ago as well as various humanitarian needs.
Photo Credit:UN
Israel launched a three-week offensive in Gaza in December 2008 with the stated aim of ending rocket attacks by Hamas and other groups. At least 1,300 Palestinians were killed and some 5,300 were injured in the heavy bombardment and fighting in densely populated areas, which reduced homes, schools, hospitals and marketplaces to rubble.
“The effects of the war still persist today and the humanitarian needs of the women, men and children of Gaza remain widespread and acute,” said Margot Ellis, Deputy Commissioner-General of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).
“The effects of the war still persist today and the humanitarian needs of the women, men and children of Gaza remain widespread and acute.”
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17/01/2012
By Peter Schwarz, World Socialists Web Site*
The downgrading of nine euro zone countries by Standard & Poor’s is a politically motivated decision. The rating agency represents the interests of an international financial elite for whom the destruction of working class living standards is not proceeding far or fast enough. This is clear from the official rationale for the downgrade.
**Image: Lower Manhattan. Author: Hu Totya | Wikimedia Commons
“Today’s rating actions are primarily driven by our assessment that the policy initiatives that have been taken by European policymakers in recent weeks may be insufficient to fully address ongoing systemic stresses in the euro zone,” the agency declared.
Italy, whose government has just whipped a draconian austerity package through parliament and is now set to deregulate the labour market, is threatened with further downgrades by Standard & Poor’s if “we see that the technocratic administration fails to implement structural reform measures due to opposition from special interest groups.”
By “structural reform measures” S&P means the elimination of legal and contractual provisions that give workers a measure of protection. “Special interest groups” is a euphemism for the working class, i.e., the vast majority of the population.
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17/01/2012
Human Wrongs Watch
(New York) – Egypt’s newly elected parliament should urgently reform the arsenal of laws used by the Mubarak government to restrict freedoms, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a new report.
**Memorial in Tahrir Sq. in honour of those who died during protests. Captions in pictures attribute most of the deaths to police violence. Author: Sherif9282 | Wikimedia Commons
“These laws were used to curb free expression and criticism of government, limit association and assembly, detain people indefinitely without charge, and shield an abusive police force from accountability, says re report, which was released on Jan. 16
The 46-page report, “The Road Ahead: A Human Rights Agenda for Egypt’s New Parliament” sets out nine areas of Egyptian law that the newly elected parliament must urgently reform if the law is to become an instrument that protects Egyptians’ rights rather than represses them.
Egypt’s existing laws – the penal code, associations law, assembly law, and emergency law – limit public freedoms necessary for a democratic transition, challenge respect for the rule of law, and impede accountability for abuses by the police and the military, HRW said.
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15/01/2012
By Chris Marsden, WSWS* –The United States, Turkey and the Gulf States are actively preparing a military intervention in Syria. Russia’s security services claim to have concrete evidence of an imminent shift to a “Libyan scenario” of “direct military intervention,” beginning with establishing a no-fly zone—the very device that was used to sanction NATO’s bombardment of Libya.
**Photo: Syria-Frames-Of-Freedom | Wikimedia Commons
But more than a no-fly zone links the overthrow of the Libyan regime of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi with the fate now planned for Bashar al-Assad. Libya was the first major expression of a counter- offensive by Washington in response to the downfall of two of its key allies in the region, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, aimed at securing its hegemony over the region’s oil riches..
It involved the preparation of the direct military overthrow of Gaddafi by NATO, using a proxy force, the Transitional National Council, dominated by Islamist forces and funded and armed by US regional allies. This is now emerging as a pattern throughout the Middle East.
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14/01/2012
Russia Today*, 13 Jan – With US and UK warships gathering in the Persian Gulf and US troops deployed in Israel, tensions in the region keep rising. But a retired US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel explained to RT that Western powers are unlikely to invade Iran.
**Credit: Hégésippe Cormier aka Hégésippe | Wikimedia Commons
The Obama administration, through its secret channels, warned Iranian religious leader Ayatollah Khamenei that closing the Strait of Hormuz would be crossing a “red line” which will not be tolerated, New York Times reported on Thursday [12 Jan.].
According to the newspaper, the officials declined to disclose whether they had received any response from the Iranian side.
Last week, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin E. Dempsey, said that in case of the closure of the strait, through which 16 million barrels of oil pass every day, the United States will “take action and reopen the strait.” This would involve military means, including warship escorts, air strikes and minesweepers.
On Thursday [12 Jan.] Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said that his country will not tolerate closure of the passage.
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14/01/2012
PressTV*, 14 Jan. – Former US Middle East envoy George Mitchell says the idea of launching a military strike against Iran is untenable, as the measure could wreak tremendous havoc on Israel.
Former US Middle East envoy George Mitchell | Source: PressTV
“I don’t think anyone who is a proponent of a preemptive strike [against Iran] has so far made a sufficient case to justify it at this time,” Mitchell said in a recent interview.
The top US diplomat further argued that military options will not guarantee the full termination of Iran’s nuclear program, adding that such confrontation can merely bring about a temporary set-back in Tehran’s achievements in nuclear technology.
He warned Washington against the repercussions of launching a new war, saying, “One thing we’ve found in recent years that is true historically is that it’s awfully easy to get into wars, and very hard to get out of them.”
Mitchell went on to say that in case of a military strike, Iran would launch “a massive missile attack” against Israel “which could do tremendous damage.”
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13/01/2012
Human Wrongs Watch
Two years after the earthquake that devastated Haiti, the drastic increase in sexual violence in displacement camps has been well documented. But another face of the epidemic has emerged as a pressing issue: the sexual exploitation of displaced women and girls, states a new joint report.
Credit:UN
Displaced women and girls have lost family and community members, along with the protection and safety nets those relationships offered, it adds.
“Because of poverty and a lack of economic opportunity, many women and girls are forced to trade sex for shelter, money or even a single meal. In many cases, those demanding sex are the very people who hold themselves out as representatives of the people—members of camp committees.”
The report highlights “current barriers to addressing sexual exploitation and offers recommendations to protect the human rights of women and girls engaging in transactional sex.” It also offers a legal analysis of the protections available for women and girls who have experienced a wide range of human rights violations associated with sexual exchanges.
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12/01/2012
Dramatic improvements in water and sanitation services are needed to eliminate cholera in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, health experts who took part in a UN-organized briefing to outline concrete steps to stem the spread of the disease in the region stressed.
Women carry jerry cans of chlorinated water, used to contain cholera in DRC | Credit:UN
The event, organized by the UN World Health Organization’s (WHO) regional arm, the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO), urged governments and international organizations to boost investment in the infrastructure and institutional capacity required to provide water and sanitation in areas affected by the disease.
Cholera is an acute intestinal infection caused by eating food or drinking water contaminated with the bacterium known as vibrio cholera. The disease has a short incubation period and produces a toxin that causes continuous watery diarrhoea, a condition that can quickly lead to severe dehydration and death if treatment is not administered promptly. Vomiting occurs in most patients.
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11/01/2012
By Prof. Vandana Shiva* – TRANSCEND
In November 2011, when the UPA [United Progressive Alliance, ruling coalition in India] government announced that it had cleared the entry of big retail chains such as Walmart and Tesco into India through 51 per cent Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in multi-brand retail, it justified the decision saying that FDI in retail would boost food security and benefit farmers’ livelihoods.
**Image: Brave New Films from United States (photo taken by Joey Caputo). Source | Wikimedia Commons
But the assurance that FDI in retail would ease inflation did not resolve the political crisis the government was facing; it deepened it. Parliament was stalled for several days of the Winter Session, after which the government was forced to withdraw its decision.
The story of FDI in retail goes back to 2005, when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh signed an agriculture agreement with the US, along with the nuclear agreement.
On the board of the US-India Knowledge Initiative in Agriculture, as it is called, sit Monsanto (the world’s leading producer of GM seeds), ConAgra (among the world’s biggest agribusinesses, along with Cargill) and Walmart (the world’s largest retail giant).
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HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 