21/06/2012
By Kumi Naidoo (Greenpeace*) – The Future we Want is nowhere to be found in the already agreed Rio+20 outcome text, which world leaders are now rubber stamping and Greenwashing. The spin cycle has begun. At the same time some 20,000 people marched on the streets of Rio in protest with an air of despair but clinging to hope.
**Photo: Greenpeace
Host President Dilma Rousseff’s rhetoric could not be further from the reality of the tragic missed opportunity of the weak deal being agreed in Rio. Her grand sounding adjectives describing the result as involving “courage, ambition, responsibility and urgency” are totally dissonant with the lack of commitment, targets and cash put on the table here.
The two summits on sustainable development happening in Rio right now could not be more different. The Peoples’ Summit is buzzing with hope and solutions while 40km across town, the Rio+20 Summit was damp with despair and problems.
In the tented Peoples’ Summit ideas and opportunities are being shared about how to address the crises of environment, equity and ecology.
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21/06/2012
By Johannes Stern and Alex Lantier (WSWS*), 21 June 2012 – Egyptian military sources signaled plans for a crackdown against popular opposition to army rule yesterday evening, amid an escalating dispute over the outcome of this weekend’s presidential elections.
Field Marshal Tantawi, Military Junta Chief. Photo: Helene C. Stikkel | Wikimedia Commons
The Supreme Presidential Electoral Commission (SPEC) announced they would delay the announcement of the election result, previously planned for today, until the weekend.
This came after a group of judges monitoring the elections, the Judges of Egypt, issued a statement unofficially declaring Muslim Brotherhood (MB) candidate Mohamed Mursi the winner.
At a press conference held at the Egyptian Journalists Syndicate, the judges announced that Mursi won the elections with 13, 238,335 votes, against 12,351,310 for Ahmed Shafiq—the last prime minister under ousted dictator Hosni Mubarak, who was the army’s preferred candidate.
Yesterday night an anonymous military source told the state-owned daily Al Ahram that the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) junta was determined to block Mursi from taking office: “The military council is determined not to allow the Muslim Brotherhood to seize power. It will not relinquish the reins of power until a new constitution is issued, and the arena is set for a balanced political process.”
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21/06/2012
By Shahira Amin*
Cairo, 20 June, 2012 – Hundreds of thousands of activists returned to Cairo’s Tahrir Square on Monday night to protest supplementary constitutional amendments issued by the ruling military council in recent days.
- **Image: Jonathan Rashad | Wikimedia Commons.
The amendments grant the military sweeping legislative and budgetary powers while limiting the powers of the country’s next president. Critics argue that the surprise amendments — announced as votes in the presidential run off were being counted — are a last-ditch effort by the military to retain power beyond the handover to civilian rule on 1 July.
The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) has denied the charge, insisting it will hand over to the newly elected president on the scheduled date as promised.
The newly introduced amendments include re-imposition of martial law allowing military police to arrest civilians “to enforce order”.
Shielding the military from accountability, they also grant the SCAF the right to form a panel to draft the constitution should the constituent assembly recently elected by parliament fail to complete its work. The military council would also have control over the drafting of the new constitution with the right to object to any article.
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18/06/2012
By Johannes Stern (WSWS*), 18 June – A show of mass abstention was the Egyptian working class’s verdict on the first presidential elections in Egypt after the revolutionary ouster of US-backed dictator Hosni Mubarak in February 2011.
**Mohamed Mursi. Photo credit: Marzouk113 | Wikimedia Commons.
In the run-offs over the weekend, Ahmed Shafiq, the last prime minister under ousted dictator Hosni Mubarak faced Mohamed Mursi, the candidate of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood (MB).
Both Shafiq and Mursi are right-wing representatives of the Egyptian ruling class, hostile to the social and democratic aspirations of the Egyptian revolution and widely discredited amongst the Egyptian masses.
No official results and numbers about the voter turnout have been announced yet. However, media reports suggest that the turnout was even lower than in the initial round of the elections three weeks ago.
Ahram Online, the English website of the most widely circulated Egyptian newspaper, wrote: “The biggest story of the day is the apparent absence of voters. The Lawyers’ Syndicate reported that only 15 percent of eligible voters hit the ballot boxes on Saturday. On Sunday, the turnout was even more lackluster.”
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15/06/2012
By Shahira Amin* in Cairo
In recent days a series of controversial public service announcements aired on state-owned TV channels in Egypt, angering Egyptians and foreigners alike. The advertisements, which warn Egyptians against talking to foreigners “because they might be spies”, have been slammed for being “shallow” and inflammatory.
**”Air Marshal” Ahmed Shafiq. Mubarak’s last primer minister.
In one of the advertisements, a foreign man walks into a cafe and inconspicuously joins a group of young Egyptians at their table.
They go on to discuss Egypt’s current situation in front of the stranger — complaining about high prices, the gas shortage, and other social and economic problems plaguing the country.
They also tell the English-speaking stranger about a reported conspiracy against the army, which he immediately tweets to an unknown third party.
Sinister background music alerts viewers of an ominous threat, as the voiceover warns that “every word has a price” and that one word could “endanger a nation”.
In another advertisement, Egyptian job seekers are advised not to apply for jobs posted on job vacancy sites online.
“You never know who may use the information you post online and for what purpose”, cautions the advert.
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15/06/2012
As the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip enters its sixth year, several UN agencies joined on 14 June a group of international charities in unanimously calling for the lifting of the blockade.
One of the few workers who has not been laid off at the Modern Industrial Group’s factory in Rafah, the Gaza Strip, which is suffering from Israel’s export ban Photo: IRIN/Andreas Hackl
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“For over five years in Gaza, more than 1.6 million people have been under blockade in violation of international law. More than half of these people are children. We, the undersigned, say with one voice: ‘end the blockade now,’” the 50 organizations and agencies said in a joint statement, the United Nations reported.
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“The government of Israel is facing mounting international criticism for the Gaza blockade and this unanimous statement from some of the most world’s most respected international organizations is likely to increase pressure for the blockade to be lifted,” they added.
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13/06/2012
By Gyorgy Dallos* (Greenpeace) – There is a story about the Fukushima nuclear disaster that is not being told … until now.
Image: Greenpeace.
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We know that almost 16,000 people were killed by the devastating tsunami and have heard the painful stories of hundreds of thousands of people who lost their homes and their livelihoods after the release of radiation from the stricken nuclear power plant.
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We haven’t heard much, however, about the hundreds of thousands who also lost a large portion of their savings.
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To tell this story, we have just released the report, Toxic Assets: nuclear assets in the 21st century. In it we expose the scale of financial losses and the failure of financial advisors to make it clear to investors that nuclear plants are risky investments.
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13/06/2012
On the occasion of World Day Against Child Labour on 12 June, two United Nations independent human rights experts highlighted that of the 215 million children working throughout the world, more than half are subjected to the worst forms of child labour, including sexual and labour exploitation.
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*Children in Namibia. Author Thomas Schoch. Source | Wikimedia Commons.
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“One of the most abhorrent forms of child slavery is found in mining and quarrying, where children start work from the age of three,” said the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, Gulnara Shahinian, in a
news release..
She added that children working in this sector, the majority of whom are boys, “are treated as commodities and face particular physical, psychological, economic and sexual exploitation. ”Recent reports show that with the current economic crises there is more reliance on commodities such as gold, a demand that has increased the numbers of boys and girls working in mines and quarries.
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12/06/2012
By Stefan Steinberg, (WSWS*), 12 June – Remarks by German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble on Monday (11 June) directly contradict assurances by Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy that there were “no strings attached” to last weekend’s rescue deal for Spanish banks.
**E.Commission headquarters, Brussels. Photo: JLogan
The bailout of Spanish banks was hastily agreed at an emergency telephone conference by euro zone finance ministers at the weekend in order to prevent a possible meltdown of the European banking system.
The deal came after intense pressure was placed on the Spanish government by the US and European governments, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and international banks.
Announcing the agreement, Rajoy was anxious to avoid the impression that the rescue represented a full-scale bailout. He declared that the agreement was a “victory for Spain” and gave “new credibility to the European project”.
Initial media reports spoke of a “mini bailout” and stressed that the money for Spanish banks did not involve the type of stringent austerity measures and budget supervision laid down by the European Union and IMF as part of their €400 billion in loans to Greece, Ireland and Portugal.
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12/06/2012
By Johan Galtung, TRANSCEND* – The multi-season Arab Spring is the third anti-imperialist Arab revolt in less than a century: against the Ottoman empire, the Western Italian-French-English empire, and now the US-Israel empire. The empires hit back.
Photo credit: **Author Bernd.Brincken | Wikimedia Commons.
The Ottomans were weak, but England-France-Israel even invaded Egypt in 29 October 1956–in the shadow of the Hungarian revolt against the Soviet empire that crumbled 23-25 years later. And now it is the turn o USA-Israel to try to maintain an illegitimate structure.
So much for the background. In the foreground is class, pitting the powerless at the bottom against the powerful at the top. Wealth flows upward accelerated by corruption; military, police and secret police forces protect the top against revolts; decision-making is by dictatorships; all of this that used to be justified by the fight against communism is now hitched on to fight against islamism.
Needless to say, we can have corrupt, brutal dictatorships in Arab countries without any imperial backing. Like in former colonies –Libya-Palestine-Iraq-Lebanon-Syria–where borders were drawn regardless of inner and outer fault-lines, trusting that by sheer force they could contain such “indigenous, tribal” conflicts.
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HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 