24/07/2012
The Bank of Spain warned on Monday 23 July that the country’s economy sank deeper into recession in the second quarter, while a growing funding crisis in its regions risks to push Spain closer to a full bailout.
**Bank of Spain. Photo: Luis García (Zaqarbal) | Wikimedia Commons.
By Nick Beams (WSWS*) – Global equity markets experienced a significant sell-off yesterday [23 July] amid fears that the Spanish crisis is rapidly worsening and Greece may soon be forced out of the euro zone, setting off a new round of financial turmoil.
Less than one month ago, European leaders emerged from a summit meeting expressing confidence that a way had been found to inject money into the Spanish banking system without increasing the sovereign debt burden of the government.
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23/07/2012
Maiduguri, (IRIN*) – How to deal with Boko Haram violence splits Nigeria: in the north, the centre of bombings and shootings by the Islamist extremists, there is an almost universal demand for dialogue, while in the south the prevailing attitude is that there can be no negotiation with “terrorists” until they end the insurrection that has killed more than 1,000 people since 2010.
Photo: Obinna Anyadike/IRIN – Boko Haram violence has hurt the local economy – but there is a demand for security gates.
President Goodluck Jonathan has repeatedly said he is open to talks, but not with a “faceless” Boko Haram. “You must have a face. You must tell us the reason why you are doing what you are doing,” he said in an interview in June.
The government has also invested in the stick. But the unprecedented defence and security vote of US$6 billion for 2012, collaboration with Western security forces, and the closure of Nigeria’s borders with its northern neighbours, is yet to blunt the Salafists.
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23/07/2012
Djoke/Gorgol, (IRIN*) – The fragrance of cooking food wafts from a communal kitchen as the villagers of Djoke, in the Gorgol region of Mauritania, talk about how hunger and drought took them by surprise. Gorgol, Brakna and Assaba form the Triangle of Poverty, where at least 60 percent of the population live on less than one US dollar a day.
Photo: IRIN
“We did not even know the rains were going to fail us [in 2011], we did not receive any warning,” said Sao Moussa, a village elder.
“No one can eat alone – many people do not have enough,” said Moussa. “All neighbours cook and eat together. Everyone eats in batches – first the children, followed by the elders, and then the more able-bodied.”
Prolonged dry spells and erratic rains in 2011 have cut food production by 34 percent, which is a substantial loss. Even when rainfall is normal, Mauritania produces less than 30 percent of the food it needs. Djoke’s residents had lost 20 of their cows to hunger the day before IRIN visited the village.
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23/07/2012
By Christoph Dreier (WSWS*) – Just over a month ago, Alexis Tsipras claimed he would declare Greece’s memorandum with the European Union (EU) “null and void” and repeal all cuts in social spending if his party won the national election. The party he leads, the Coalition of the Alternative Left (SYRIZA), now fully supports the loan agreements made with the EU and promises the government to act as a responsible opposition.
**Image: SYRIZA electoral poster. Source: Coalition of Radical Left.
In a radio interview last Monday, SYRIZA spokesman Panagiotis Skourletis said the majority of his parliamentary faction opposed the Communist Party’s (KKE’s) draft legislation stipulating the termination of all agreements with the “troika”—the European Commission, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank.
Skourletis told the World Socialist Web Site that SYRIZA was indeed in favour of renegotiating the terms, but that if Greece completely rejected the memorandum, it would also have to forgo the related loan payments from the EU. “We can’t support these parts of the bill”, he said, although SYRIZA parliamentarians could agree to some of its content.
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23/07/2012
By Silvia Swinden, Pressenza* London – US$21 trillion – as much as the American and Japanese GDPs put together – is the wealth hidden in offshore tax havens, according to research commissioned by the campaign group Tax Justice Network and published by the British paper The Guardian. Economic violence kills but its invisibility requires special measures to fight against it.
Image by: Wikimedia Commons
In Republic, Plato tells the story of the Gyges, a shepherd who discovers a corpse in a cave with a golden ring that gives him the power to become invisible. He uses it to seduce the queen and murders the king to take his place.
The question about morality presented thus by Plato is whether any man could resist the temptation of being able to perform an objectionable act without being known or discovered.
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21/07/2012
Millions of citizens continue to protest in major Spanish cities against the right-wing government’s policy of severe cuts imposed on health, education and unemployment subsidies, while reducing public workers’ wages and increasing taxes on law and mid income people to save 65 billion euro (US$80 billion) in two and a half years. Over the last seven months, Mariano Rajoy’s government has focused basically on the immediate bail out of private banks with up to 100 billion euro (over US$120 billion).
**Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy. Photo: Iker Parriza
By Chris Marsden (WSWS)* – Thursday’s [19 July] demonstrations in Spain against the Popular Party (PP) government’s latest austerity measures were a mass outpouring of anger and defiance.
Well over a million and possibly several million protested in 80 cities, with some estimates of the numbers protesting in the capital Madrid as high as 800,000, and hundreds of thousands protesting in Barcelona.
The protests coincided with parliament meeting to approve a package of €65 billion (US$80 billion) of wage cuts, spending cuts and tax increases announced earlier by Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy.
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21/07/2012
The UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories condemned Israel’s use of solitary confinement against Palestinian children, and urged the Israeli Government to treat such detainees in accordance with international human rights laws.
Israeli soldier arresting 12 year-old Palestinian child at Nablus checkpoint | Credit:United Nations
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“Israel’s use of solitary confinement against children flagrantly violates international human rights standards,” the Special Rapporteur Richard Falk said in a news release.
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“However, using solitary confinement as a punishment for Palestinian children who wish to peacefully protest their situation, including by commencing a hunger strike against conditions of detention, is an appalling abuse of child prisoners,” he added.
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“I again condemn Israel’s harsh arrest operations and procedures.”
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18/07/2012
By Uri Avnery*, TRANSCEND – Two former Prime Ministers of Israel are in the news these days. They represent two of the many faces of Israel. They also raise a universal question: which is preferable – an honest fanatic or a corrupt pragmatist?
**Yitzhak Shamir’s coffin lying in state in the Knesset, July 2, 2012. Photo: יעקב | Wikimedia Commons
Yitzhak Shamir died two weeks ago and was buried in the cemetery of the “Great of the Nation” in Jerusalem. He was 97 years old and had been vegetating for years in a state of dementia. Most Israelis did not know that he was still alive.
When I described him on TV as “the most successful terrorist of the 20th century”, the interviewer raised his eyebrows. But it was an accurate description.
Shamir was not a great thinker. In his teens he joined the right-wing Zionist youth organization of Vladimir Jabotinsky in Poland, and since then he did not change his world-view one iota. In this respect he was absolutely immovable. He wanted a Jewish state in all of the historical country. Period. No nonsense about Arabs and such.
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18/07/2012
By EurActiv* – Germany’s lights were kept on by solar power last winter, after Berlin’s rapid phase out of nuclear power brought the country to within a whisker of complete breakdown, senior energy industry sources say.
**Photo credit: Saperaud
Following the Fukushima nuclear disaster in March 2011, Germany moved to close all 22 of its nuclear reactors. But problems in readjusting electricity supplies led spare capacity – the potential amount of excess production – between France and Germany to fall to just 2 gigawatts (GW) in February.
“It’s almost nothing,” a well-placed official told a briefing organised by the Institut français des relations internationales (IFRI), “less than one percent.”
“Technicians on both sides [of the border] were aware that we were as close as we had ever been to a breakdown of the power system,” he said. “We were saved by the sun.”
By a stroke of fortune, Germany – which last year accounted for half of the world’s installed solar photovoltaic (PV) capacity – enjoyed an extraordinarily sunny February.
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HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 