11/03/2015
By Robert J. Burrowes*
March 2015 — With the passing of another International Women’s Day, during which much attention around the world has again been focused on tackling violence against women, I would like to explain why none of the initiatives currently being proposed will achieve anything unless we acknowledge, and act on, the cause of this violence.
The daughter of a sex worker, India. © UNICEF/HQ00-0983/Achinto
So let me briefly explain the fundamental cause of violence in our world, including the cause of violence against women, and invite you to do something very personal and effective about it.
Perpetrators of violence learn their craft in childhood. If you inflict violence on a child, it learns to inflict violence on others. The terrorist suffered violence as a child.
The individual who perpetrates violence in the home, in the schoolyard or on the street suffered violence as a child. The man who inflicts violence on women suffered violence as a child.
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Posted in Africa, Asia, Latin America & Caribbean, Market Lords, Middle East, Mother Earth, Others-USA-Europe-etc., The Peoples |
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11/03/2015
By Don Murray*
The shelling in Ukraine has driven 1,000 Donetsk residents underground. Afraid to venture outside, they still maintain a spirit of generosity.
Nikolai grieves for his mother in a basement in Donetsk, Ukraine. | UNHCR/Andrew McConnell
They are the cellar people. In the conflict in eastern Ukraine, which has dragged on for almost a year, they have fled to the basements below their apartment buildings or to cellars dug to hold their tools and pickled vegetables. There are at least 1,000 of them in and around Donetsk, huddling below ground to avoid the shells which still fall regularly.
We followed Nikolai into the bowels of 82A Kozareva Street, down the stairs, right, then left, through a grey labyrinth of brick and cement corridors lit by a naked light bulb. Nikolai unlocked his door and walked into a dim, square room, a room of pain and loss.
In July 2014 the shelling became intense. Nikolai and his mother fled their wrecked apartment upstairs – its windows had all been blown out – to the cellar.
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Posted in Market Lords, Others-USA-Europe-etc., The Peoples, War Lords |
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11/03/2015
By Kendra Ulrich*
11 March, 2015 –– Today, the 11th of March 2015, marks the fourth year since beginning of one of the world’s worst nuclear disasters: the triple reactor core meltdowns and catastrophic containment building failures at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. It’s a nuclear crisis that, unfortunately, continues to unfold.
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Photo: Greenpeace
The widespread environmental contamination largely remains. Decontamination efforts are, many times, missing the government’s targets.
Massive amounts of highly radioactive water flow into the ocean from the reactor site every day. The location of molten reactor cores in Units 1-3 remains unknown – which is a problem that requires massive amounts of cooling water every day to minimize the risk of another major radiation release.
In spite of these ongoing problems and the fact that many of the over 120,000 displaced nuclear refugees are still living in difficult evacuation conditions four years later, the Abe government in Japan is pushing to restart the country’s idled nuclear fleet.
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Posted in Africa, Asia, Latin America & Caribbean, Market Lords, Middle East, Mother Earth, Others-USA-Europe-etc. |
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11/03/2015
This is the second article of a two-part series on the social crisis in Greece. Part one was posted on 10 March 2015.
11 March 2015, WSWS* — Today 3 million Greeks, around a quarter of the population, have no health insurance and no right to receive state-funded health care.
Dental workers treating children at the Doctors of the World headquarters in Athens | Source: WSWS
The European Union, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund’s Greek austerity programme insists that spending on public health cannot rise above 6 percent of GDP.
According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) figures, health spending per head in Greece dropped by 25 percent between 2009 and 2012, and has not improved since.
Imposing these unprecedented cuts has destroyed an advanced public health care system built up over decades.
The human cost has been staggering. Two health care trade unions issued figures in September 2014 showing that 850 medical clinics have been abolished, 10,000 beds shut down and 30,000 front-line positions removed. Eleven hospitals have closed since the beginning of the crisis.
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11/03/2015
10 March 2015, WSWS* – Since 2009, the most brutal austerity measures carried out in a European country in the post-World War II period have led to the collapse of basic social infrastructure in Greece, including the denial of access to health care for 3 million people.
People entering a soup kitchen in a working class district in Athens in January | Source: WSWS
According to a March 2014 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) report, 30 percent of the Greek population lives below the poverty line and 17 percent of the people are unable to meet their daily food needs.
Some 300,000 households have no income, and the same number live below the poverty line. Last year, the child allowance benefit, worth just €98.64 a year for a one-child family, was halved for 300,000 families.
Eighty percent of Greeks have cut back on the purchase of basic commodities. Unemployment has hit more than a quarter of the population and more than 50 percent of young people.
Many are forced to exist on meagre time-limited unemployment benefits, often waiting months to receive a payment. Once this expires, they are left with no income and no automatic right to health insurance.
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Posted in Market Lords, Others-USA-Europe-etc., The Peoples |
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