Archive for November 3rd, 2012

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03/11/2012

Who Cares About 1,8 Million Haitians Hit by Sandy – They Do Not Vote in US Elections!

Human Wrongs Watch

Mainstream media have focussed for many days on Hurricane Sandy’s impact on the U.S.–predictions, images, surveys on who will win the presidential election on 6 November, etc. Meanwhile, very little attention has been paid to the fact that some 1.8 million Haitians have also been affected according to the United Nations relief agency after its first assessment of the situation in the region, which alerted that food security remains an urgent concern in the Caribbean nation.

Hurricane Sandy passed to the west of Haiti causing heavy rains and winds, flooding homes and overflowing rivers. Photo: MINUSTAH/Logan Abassi

Initial data collected by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) showed Hurricane Sandy, which ploughed through the Caribbean country before hitting the eastern coast of the United States, killed 60 people and significantly damaged critical infrastructure such as roads, schools and hospitals in addition to destroying thousands of homes, the UN reported on 2 November 2012.

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Posted in Latin America & Caribbean, Mother Earth, The Peoples | 1 Comment »

03/11/2012

Burma — People Suffering from Burns, Gunshot, Arrow Injuries in Rakhine State

Yangon, Myanmar – The UN refugee agency has been taking part in inter-agency missions to assess the situation for people in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, where the government now estimates that more than 35,000 have been displaced by inter-communal violence.

© UNHCR Myanmar. A camp for internally displaced people from the earlier wave of violence that shook Myanmar’s Rakhine state.

In the last two days and with government authorization, UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) staff have visited villages in Myebon, Mrauk-U and Minbya townships, to the east and north-east of Rakhine’s state capital Sittwe. They found groups of displaced people in urgent need of food and shelter, UNHCR reported on 2 November, 2012.

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Posted in Asia, Others-USA-Europe-etc., The Peoples, War Lords | 5 Comments »

03/11/2012

Imagine a Hedge Fund Manager as U.S. President

Human Wrongs Watch

By Julio Godoy, IDN-InDepthNews, Berlin – In the late summer of 1998, in the wake of the Asian financial crisis, a group of German and French professors of economics organised at the University of Bremen in Germany a seminar to discuss ways to re-regulate the international financial markets. The theme could not have been timelier:

Picture: Mitt Romney | Credit: biography.com

The disaster of the Mexican crisis in late 1994 had already shaken the foundations of neoliberalism in Latin America, the Asian crisis repeated the same symptoms, and it was already clear that some hedge funds, such as the Long Term Capital Management, which had been heavily speculating in Russian bonds, would sooner than later go bust.

Already at that time it was clear that the moral hazard, the irresponsibility of speculating investors as intrinsic component of international financial markets, their absolute confidence that the noxious consequences of fraudulent actions would be paid for by the state, was the directing principle of such markets.

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Posted in Market Lords, Others-USA-Europe-etc., The Peoples, War Lords | 1 Comment »

03/11/2012

‘Agricultural Cooperatives Vital Weapon in War on Global Poverty, Hunger’ — UN

Human Wrongs Watch

In a world that produces enough food for all and despite gains in the fight against hunger, it is “unacceptable” that close to 870 million people continue to suffer from chronic malnutrition…. Greater ‘cooperativization’ can help reduce hunger and poverty across poor rural communities.

Photo: UN

In fact, “agricultural cooperatives provide small-scale food producers with what may be their best chance to compete in global markets,” the head of the United Nations food agency said on 2 November 2012, adding that cooperative units were particularly important for farmers in the developing world.

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Posted in Africa, Asia, Latin America & Caribbean, Market Lords, Middle East, Mother Earth, Others-USA-Europe-etc., The Peoples | Leave a Comment »

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