15/10/2012
By AI* – The United Kingdom government’s plans for a substantial extension of the use of secret evidence in the justice system have been heavily criticized in a new Amnesty International (AI) report published on 15 October 2012.
Amnesty International has heavily criticized the UK government’s plans for a substantial extension of the use of secret evidence in the justice system. © Steve Calcott | Source: AI
The proposals would allow the government to rely on secret evidence in civil cases, including cases of alleged government responsibility for human rights violations such as torture and enforced disappearance.
The measures, contained in the Justice and Security Bill due to be debated in the House of Lords in the coming weeks, would allow the government to use so-called “closed material procedures” to prevent individuals and their lawyers from seeing documents even when they show the involvement of UK officials in wrongdoing, no matter how grave.
If such disclosures are deemed to harm “national security”, then the material can be withheld, potentially indefinitely, even if there is an overwhelming public interest in disclosure.
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15/10/2012
By RT*, 14 October, 2012 – US and UK weapons ammunition were linked to heart defects, brain dysfunctions and malformed limbs, according to a recent study. The report revealed a shocking rise in birth defects in Iraqi children conceived after the US invasion.
**Photo: Jim Gordon | Wikimedia Commons
Titled ‘Metal Contamination and the Epidemic of Congenital Birth Defects in Iraqi Cities,’ the study was published by the Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology. It revealed a connection between military activity in the country and increased numbers of birth defects and miscarriages.
The report, which can be found here, also contains graphic images of Iraqi children born with birth defects. (The images were not published on RT due to their disturbing content.) It documents 56 families in Fallujah, which was invaded by US troops in 2004, and examines births in Basrah in southern Iraq, which was attacked by British forces in 2003.
The study concluded that US and UK ammunition is responsible for high rates of miscarriages, toxic levels of lead and mercury contamination and spiraling numbers of birth defects, which ranged from congenital heart defects to brain dysfunctions and malformed limbs.
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15/10/2012
By IEA* – Iraq’s energy sector holds the key to the country’s future prosperity and can make a major contribution to the stability and security of global energy markets, the International Energy Agency (IEA) says in a special report of the World Energy Outlook – the first time that the IEA has conducted a comprehensive review of the energy sector of a major Middle East producer.
Source: IEA
The IEA’s Iraq Energy Outlook, which was released on 9 October 2012, finds that Iraq makes by far the largest contribution to global oil supply growth over the coming decades, with current production of 3 million barrels per day (mb/d) more than doubling by 2020 and going on to reach more than 8 mb/d by 2035.
Iraq becomes a key supplier to fast-growing Asian markets, mainly China, and the world’s second largest oil exporter by the 2030s, overtaking Russia.
“This landmark study confirms the increasing importance of Iraq to the global energy system, highlighting the key role it is expected to play in meeting growing energy needs and the responsibilities it will assume as a strategic source of world oil supply. Put simply, this report shows that we all have an interest in Iraq realising its potential and revitalising its economy,” said IEA Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven.
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15/10/2012
By Niall Green, WSWS*, 15 October 2012 – In a speech before defense industry executives, US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta used the outbreak of a computer virus at two energy companies in the Middle East to warn that the United States and its allies faced a threat equivalent to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks or the Japanese bombardment of Pearl Harbor in 1941.
**Image: The Opte Project | Wikimedia Commons
Panetta was the guest of honor Thursday [11 Oct.] at a New York City dinner organized by the trade group Business Executives for National Security, a lobbying front for military contractors. His comments followed an alleged cyber attack against the Saudi Arabian state oil company, Aramco, as well as Qatari natural gas company, Rasgas.
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15/10/2012
A top UN envoy said he was alarmed at recent reports that Israeli settlers have repeatedly attacked Palestinian farmers in the West Bank, destroying hundreds of olive trees at the height of the harvest season.
*”Gas the Arabs”; graffiti on the door of a home in Hebron | Photo: Magne Hagesæter
“These acts are reprehensible and I call on the Government of Israel to bring those responsible to justice,” said on 14 October 2012 the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Robert Serry.
“Israel must live up to its commitments under international law to protect Palestinians and their property in the occupied territory so that the olive harvest – a crucial component of Palestinian livelihoods and the Palestinian economy – can proceed unhindered and in peace,” he said.
In a briefing to the Security Council last month, Mr. Serry had warned that the lack of progress between Israelis and Palestinians on the political track and the continuing conflict and occupation was putting at risk the viability of the two-State solution, the UN reports.
He added that the Palestinian Authority (PA) in particular, was experiencing the consequences of this risk in the form of a severe financial and economic crisis, and stressed that international donors and the Israeli Government should do more to alleviate the PA’s burden and ensure its fiscal viability in the short and medium term.
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14/10/2012
By AI* – The Mexican authorities must take decisive action to tackle the systemic and widespread use of torture and ill treatment documented across the country, which dramatically increased under the government of Felipe Calderón, Amnesty International said in a new report.
The National Palace, symbolic seat of the President and the cabinet. Photo: Reinhard Jahn, Mannheim
The report Abusers known, victims ignored: Torture and ill-treatment in Mexico, released on 11 October 2012, explores the increase of cases of torture and ill-treatment by police and security forces during the Calderón administration, the lack of effective investigations and the denial of justice for the victims.
“The Calderón administration has effectively turned a blind eye to the ‘torture epidemic’ we’ve been witnessing in Mexico,” said Rupert Knox, Mexico researcher at Amnesty International.
“The protection of human rights has been ignored or sidelined in favour of the government’s strategy of militarized combat of organized crime and drug cartels.”
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14/10/2012
‘Turkey is not problem-free; no country is. The focus here is on four problems involving other nations: the Greeks, the Kurds, the Armenians and the many nations in Syria. Politics as usual in homogeneous countries, with no solution for nationalities, is the same as courting disaster. A minority climbs up, conquers economic-cultural niches and the majorities will silence them politically-militarily; such as Armenians in Turkey, Jews in Germany, Chinese in Southeast Asia; Tutsis-Hutus.’
**Credit: Captain Blood | Wikimedia Commons.
By Johan Galtung*, TRANSCEND – There was a time, a century or so ago, when Turkey was the “sick man of Europe”. Times are a-changing.
Today Turkey is quite healthy, and much of Europe is sick, suffering from gross institutional and economic problems, including a flagrant inequality within and between countries, between a creditor and a periphery of debtors in bondage.
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14/10/2012
By International Peace Bureau* (IPB) – “For a peacemaking bloc, this is a highly militarized one”
EU flag. Source: IPB
The IPB finds the award of the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize to the European Union surprising in that it awards a prize not to a head of state but to an entire bloc of states, thus making it difficult to identify the real recipient.
Is the EU really a ‘champion of peace’, as Nobel conceived it? Or is it a club of states with many contradictory impulses and interests?
The arguments given by the Norwegian Nobel Committee are not entirely false. The EU has played the historical role that it describes.
All forms of cooperation contain some elements of peacefulness, and there is indeed a strong case for regional approaches to peacemaking between states and peoples, and in this the EU has been a pioneer.
But what is worrying are the many aspects the Committee leaves out, making it a highly selective accolade.
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13/10/2012
New York – Citing the threat to regional peace from terrorists and Islamic militants in rebel-held northern Mali, the UN Security Council held out the possibility of endorsing, within the next 45 days, an international military force to restore the unity of the West African country.
UN Security Council. UN Photo/JC McIlwaine
In a unanimously adopted resolution on 12 October 2012, the 15-member body called on Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon “to provide, at once, military and security planners to the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the African Union (AU) and other partners to help frame a response to a request by Mali’s transitional authorities for such a force, and to report back within 45 days,” the UN reported.
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13/10/2012
By IRIN*, Athens – Three police officers in body armour surround two dark-skinned men on a busy street in Athens, Greece’s increasingly restive capital. It is a scene that has been playing out across the city since the launch of a government crackdown on illegal migration two months ago.
**Image (1). Photo: Kristy Siegfried/IRIN. Vandalised offices of the Tanzanian Community Association in Athens.
The police operation – ironically codenamed Xenios Zeus, after the Greek god of hospitality – has so far rounded up over 36,000 migrants, 9 percent of whom have been detained for lacking legal documents, contributing to an atmosphere of fear and desperation in neighbourhoods with large migrant populations.
“Even if you have full documents, they arrest you,” said Kayu Ligopora, a Tanzanian who has lived in Greece for three years.
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HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 